Question for the advanced folks

[wingflapp]

A question on exposure. I'm noticing that almost all of my photos have the sky blown out. It's not horrible, by any means, but it's annoying, now that I know enough to look for it. I could meter on the sky, but then I'm under exposing whatever subject I'm taking. Neither is a good option for me.

What do you guys do? Do you generally try to keep the sky out of your photos?

These photographs are from a handheld shot, so I don't really see an option to take several photos and merge them later.

Is this just 'one of those things' when taking photos that have sky in them, or is there something else I should read about?

I'm generally spot metering on the subject. The subjects are usually well exposed, requiring little or no adjustment in post.

Any suggestions, tips or reading material would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

wing.

[gturner]

There was a thread last week about the same thing.
You have 3 options when there is a big contrast between subject and sky.
1. Meter for the subject and blow the sky. The only real option with no external light source or ability to recompose the shot to exclude the sky.

2. Slightly underexpose the subject to save the sky, then try save it all in post processing.

3. Use external light sources to light the subject and expose the environment correctly.

Read up on using fill flash.

[Mike367]

You could use a graduated neutral density filter to darken just the sky.

You can also shoot in raw, the make 3 different jpeg or tiff conversions, one 2 stops under, one normal and one 2 stops over. Then combine the 3 otherwise identical shots into a HDR.
Sometimes you may just patch the sky from the dark one into the normal one.

[Bruce A]

First of all a Polorizing filter will help a lot. Second try not take a shot with a "near the sun" background (where the sky is washed out) especially during the full day hours - this is why a lot of photographers shoot at the golden hours around sun-up and sundown.

Then there is editing. Using PS you can work with layers - using levels (for example) you can bring back the deeper colours in the sky and brush back the rest of the image to it's correct exposure. You can do similar things in Lightroom without layers but someone else can chime in about that.

Now I may not be too advanced in photography, but I responded because I think I'm advanced in age

Understanding Exposure - Bryan Peterson is a handy read.

[graciousness]

+1 on fill flash. Even using a built in flash for this would help tremendously, so long as you adjust the flash output using the flash exposure compensation in your camera (if it has it). You just want to 'fill in' the subject with enough light so that it's not underexposed, but making sure that it doesn't look look like you've obviously used flash on them.

Nowhere near advanced myself, but happy to share the very little things that I learn

[wingflapp]

All good info. Thanks for the responses, folks. I appreciate the help.

[sbakewell1101]

shoot in raw too.. i have brought back many skies in camera raw using an adjustment brush...

This photo, the sky was completely blown and I brought it back, you can't always do it... when it is grey and overcast, i have a hard time bringing that back, but sometimes. but fill flash is really the only way.. except for what someone said above.

Here is an example of a totally blown sky and then brought back in PP (shot in RAW).. I could of done a better job, looking back at it the clouds look a little gray.. but there is always stuff to fix after the fact.

[SwissJon]

Use a GND if you're photographing something and there's a reasonably distinct horizon, and expose for the non sky part of the photo. It doesn't need to be particularly flat, a soft GND will cope with bumpy horizons. It's just make sure that there's nothing in the foreground at the top of the photo that you mind being under exposed. The photo below was shot with a 3 stop soft GND. On the photo I took without it, the clouds were blown out and beyound rescue.



Where you have people and subjects in the close foreground, you could still use a GND, but you risk making their faces under exposed if they're silouetted against the sky. You can usually rescue that. But you could also try using a fill flash to light the subjects, and expose for the sky, like I did below. (I was told, and it worked) to use coloured gels, otherwise the white of the flash makes the subject too white compared to the sunset.



Alternatively you could allow the sky to blow out, expose for the foreground and call it creativity.. This works especially well if the sun is behind the subject and you allow a bit of lens flare to add drama (I don't have any examples, but I like the look)