blown out sky

[bambaz]

Was taking photos the other day of friends and the sky was blown out in high lights ( no cloud cover on summers day in QLD ) I tried to reduce the F stop and iso so it wasn't so sensitive but they still blew out. can any one help or would I have to purchase some nd :confused filters?

[RichardTaylor]

Did you shoot at a faster shutter speed also?
What direction was the sun coming from, eg; was it behind you or in front of you?

[bambaz]

yes i did shoot a fast shutter speed shoot with the sun to the side and back light from the

[RichardTaylor]

Can you post an example along with Exif data.

[bhursey]

Well it depends on how much the subject is lit vs the sky. So if the subject is say exposed at f4 at 1/500 and the sky at f4 1/2000 then the sky will be blown out while the subject will be lit. This is a constant battle by photographers. This is the reason you see allot of professional photographers taking pictures in the morning or late in the day so the sky is not as powerful. Also you can use fill flash but that will in some cases limit your shutter speed. So over powering the mid day sun you need a very powerful flash like a portable studio strobe. So if they have a strobe to match the above exposure. You would need to be shooting like f10 or f12 1/250 with a very powerfull strobe off camera to keep the sky nice and blue.

[sk66]

Thread on it here with some basic "fixes" How do you expose for sky and subject?

[bhursey]

Originally Posted by sk66

Thread on it here with some basic "fixes" How do you expose for sky and subject?

So was I getting to complicated? :P

[sk66]

Originally Posted by bhursey

So was I getting to complicated? :P

Nah in the post I linked to they address some very basic fundamentals I would not have thought to address, and you didn't either....like subject/sun placement

[RichardTaylor]

I'm just a simple guy.