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How to prevent blown-out sky?

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la_gouyn

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Hi,

In a lot of my sunny day photos, the sky turns out very bright white, even though the sky was a nice deep blue on the day those photos were shot.

Does anyone have advice on how to get blue skys on bright days, and still expose the subject properly?

-Allan

Rebel XT
 
If on a tripod, two exposures, one with the sky correct and one with the subject correct and overlay them. Could do the same with PS if a handheld, might take some more work though. There are some filters you could try popping on but I doubt that would really help a lot. Maybe a skylight or ND / CP?

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The scene exceeds the dynamic range that your camera can capture. Most digital camera sensors have about the same ability to capture dynamic range (the difference between the brightest parts and the darkest parts) about equal to slide film. In general, you are better off trying to expose for the bright areas (spot meter the sky), and take the chance that your shadows will be blocked or full of noise if you want to have your blue skies.

There are various techniques for dealing with this, but one way is to shoot in RAW format, and expose one image for the highlights and one for the shadows, then layer and blend them in photoshop.

There isn't some setting or exposure that will change what your camera's sensor is capable of recording, however.

--
'Make great images with any camera and they will talk.' Melvin Sokolsky

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The only time I have found ths problem is 1: if I have to open up a lot to shoot into some shadows, thus grossly overexposing the sky, or 2: on cloudy bright days when I need to expose my subject correcly (If they are in the shadow of a building or such and I also want the detail of clouds as well. If I take care and expose carfully, I have not found ths to be a problem. Maybe the E-1 is a lot better at his than others, but I doubt it.

Incidentally, if you believe what your camera meter tells you, you WILL get into this sort of trouble. Use a handheld meter, or meter from a grey card or aim down at the grass to get a better reading. There is a reason why they put these adjustments on cameras.
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The right to free speech in no way implies any right to be taken seriously!
Joe
 
Since you've correctly metered for your subject, the sky is too bright to be captured by your camera. So you can either expose properly for your subject & blow out the sky, or expose for the sky and get an under-exposed subject.

The previous suggestions work--get 2 exposures and blend them, or maybe process 2 files from a RAW file and blend them.

This was what I did before. It entailed a lot of work, and can be mind-numbing if you have a lot of shots to process.

Now that I've grown lazy...

The Circular Polarizer will bring out the rich blue of the sky, and a Graduated ND Filter will darken the sky so that your camera sensor can capture both a perfectly exposed subject and a rich blue sky. I would suggest a fill in flash or a reflector to minimize shadows.

HTH.
 
I read somewhere that it's best to use Manual. Meter the shadow and then the bright area, then set the exposure to somewhere in the middle. Alternatively, PS CS2 has the shadow/highlight function which does a good job in correcting this.
 
In the old days, way before PS, I would meter the sky and use fill flash for my main subject.

If a scenic, I would bracket and have the lab help out with dodge and burning. As mentioned before, using filters would also be a big help.
Again, this was in those days of film and no PS.
 
If you use a tripod, you can take a few pictures and uses
the new HDR plugin in PSCS II and blend.

A single picture has to be metered for the sky, but that may
darken some of the shadow areas.

F8 @ 250 bracket from there.
 
And so it would on film as well....

The answer is quite simple: The sun has to be BEHIND you to get a nice blue sky in the picture. If you get a backlight because the sun is not behind you, you will not get a blue sky in the picture, not in digital, not in film. This is one of photography's general rules.

Metering for the sky and doing a second picture everytime is of course an alternative, but an expensive one.

Theo
la_gouyn said:
Hi,

In a lot of my sunny day photos, the sky turns out very bright
white, even though the sky was a nice deep blue on the day those
photos were shot.

Does anyone have advice on how to get blue skys on bright days, and
still expose the subject properly?

-Allan

Rebel XT
Click to expand...
 
Blending exposures with photoshop is a good idea. Personally I still prefer to use filters. Maybe its old fashioned, but I like to get as much done before pressing the shutter as possible. Use LEE filters and have 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 ND grads in both hard and soft graduation. This setup is good for most jobs, but in situations where the image does not have any horizontal area from which you can filter, eg. a vertical shot of a mountain gorge, taken from its base, I revert to photoshop.

Regards

Simon
--
http://www.sbphotography.org.uk
 
Allan, use a polrizing filter, or use a split neutral density filter.

the polarizer will make the sky bluer and if there are nice clouds, it will make them stand out.

This is the easy, best, way to solve your problem.

Split neutral density filtrs are sheets or circles that are half grey, and half clear (or two thirds, one third, or...)

You put this over your lens, and line it up so the grey part is over the bright sky, which in turn reduces the exposure when the sky hiots the film/sensor in your camera.

Where the slpit is affects where you place the horizon.

Some split NDs have sharp edges, and others are fuzzier, to help you adapt to the scene.

For reasons that escape me, using filters like this is much more popular in Europe than in North America.

But the polarizer is the easy way.

BAK
 
I would think that pretty close to 100% of professional landscape photographers use ND grad filters or perhaps a polariser, or even both.
 
Mike Goebel said:
Circular Polarizers is correct.
We shoot lots of baseball and vollyball individuals in the bright sun.
We all use a circular polarizer to bring out the sky and fill flash
to eliminate the shadows.
Click to expand...
...and if you are photographing travel / landscapes / architecture?
How do you use a fill flash to fill in a mountain over a mile away?

Simple. You don't you use a ND grad.
 
This image was shot with an exposure bracket from -1 to +1 and overlayed in PS and employing extensive layer masks, to reveal areas of the foreground from the lighter exposure.

selfport2.jpg
'] http://216.120.226.209/~waynewh/selfport2.jpg[/img] [/URL]

--
http://www.pbase.com/wayneh_nyc
 
A polarizer orr a CP alone would only darken the sky, but not enough to expose it accurately. I would say that the grad ND's are best solution for balancing exposure overall (without having to bother w/ two exposures), but proves to be a problem in cases such as when trees or buildings go past the horizon enough that it would fall into the effective area of the gradation so the result is they would turn out darker than actual.

This basically means that foreground objects that fill up the frame in the vertical position would inevitably require two exposures and overlaying in PS.
riddell said:
I would think that pretty close to 100% of professional landscape
photographers use ND grad filters or perhaps a polariser, or even
both.
Click to expand...
--
http://www.pbase.com/wayneh_nyc
 
Have you actually used a polarizer yourself on a sunny day with fluffy clouds?

BAK
 
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