White (overexposed?) skies??

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vibrantcolour

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Hi

I went for a session with my camera yesterday and a lot o the images had white bleached ut skies, even though it was a lovely blue sky.


My guess is it was overexposed, but how do i make sure this doesnt happen again?

Many thanks CS
 
I'm assuming the filters aren't much use if you are taking a picture of something in the foreground? For example last i was taking some of ponies and i noticed the sky looked blown. Or am i totally wrong?:)

What i ended up doing was doing was just dialing down the exposure a stop - i found this helped. Again not sure this is the best solution?...

Anna
 
Sounds like all you need to do is meter a bit better? Filters would be overkill. If you've got a couple of example photos to see what the deal is that would be great, though.
 
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Here are the examples.
 
Assuming that you are using manual mode, shooting RAW and using spot metering (or center-weighted metering), meter sky and without changing the settings re-compose shot. It could look dark to you on camera's LCD, but when you're back home, (using RAW editor) add some brightness to the picture and voila! If you overexpose sky (or anything else for that matter) the details are lost forever (most of times), if you underexpose you always can add brighhtness. Filters could help as well :)

Hope that's in plain english :)
 
You need to understand the different metering modes.

What Rebel said is partly true - blown highlights are lost for life, but dialing down the exposure causes you to crush your lowlights also resulting in loss of detail - you can't increase exposure and find detail that the camera doesn't record.

In photography you always want to expose to the right - there is far more detail in highlights than lowlights so you should be pushing in that direction without blowing anything ideally

With the two pictures posted 1 is into the sun and 1 is away from it. Into the sun has a much larger dynamic range that the camera cannot cope with, so it will try to expose sky, or foreground, correctly at the expense of the other.

To rectify this you either need ND graduated filters (to darken the sky without darkening the foreground) or you can take two photos; 1 exposed for the sky with a lot of crushed lowlights and another exposed for the froeground with the sky blown out and then merge them in photoshop (plenty of tutorials available).
 
vibrantcolour said:
Hi

I went for a session with my camera yesterday and a lot o the images had white bleached ut skies, even though it was a lovely blue sky.


My guess is it was overexposed, but how do i make sure this doesnt happen again?

Many thanks CS
Click to expand...

A "lovely blue sky" should not be bleached out unless your exposure is really way off base. In fact, a blue sky is quite a good target for metering, since it should be about in the midde of the tonal range. Here's what a blue sky looks like....

20080125_161450_2680_LR.jpg


or....

20070623_155452_LR.jpg


or even....

20071128_160025_0373_LR.jpg


Meter off a blue sky and you will be in the right ballpark for a good exposure.

Where things get challenging is when you have bright fluffy clouds, or a light haze or light cloud, well illuminated by the sun, in the background of your scene. Then things get tricky. In those situations, if you want to get the brightest exposure possible, while holding detail in the sky, spot(partial) meter off the brightest part of the sky and set a manual exposure at +3 stops above the centre of the meter. The meter only goes up to +2 stops, so got to +2 and then reduce your shutter speed (or open your aperture) (or increase your ISO) by 1 more stop and you're done. Shoot raw and you should be able to sort things out pretty well from there.

Here's an example, as shot (no edits), to hold detail in the sky....
20071130_112150_0405_LR.jpg


and then some tweaking to lift the shadows, with the sky painted back in by selective exposure reduction....
20071130_112150_0405_LR.jpg


I didn't use the technique I described to shoot this, because I was still in noob node, but the end result is the same. All I did for this was to shoot in Av mode, check the preview image for blinkies, and dial in some -EC (-1) until the blinkies almost disappeared.


Perhaps if you post a sample image, complete with EXIF intact, we can help diagnose the problem and suggest the correct solution.
 
Do the old double exposure thing if you can't afford filters.

Take two exposures of the same photo, one where the sky is correctly exposed and one where the foreground is exposed and merge them in pp
 
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