Blown out Sky......

J

jmann

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Jon
Edit My Images
Yes
Evening all....

Went out to take a few pictures today of some friends riding bikes....

Nice sunny day, but thats where the problem began.....

I reviewed all my shots in aperture and the sky was blown in EVERY picture....?!

What am i doing wrong...?!......is it an incorrect white balance as i changed that last saturday for shooting in the snow?!

Any help, or hits for setting up the camera for shooting in brighter environments appreciated. I was shooting shutter priority of between 1/250-1/500 and aperture ranged, but was f4.5 to f5.3

any clues?!
 
Its prob because your camera is metering for your subject/foreground rather than the whole scene. with your subject possibly being darker, and it being a bright day, the camera will expose for your subject resulting in the sky being out of the cameras dynamic range, thus blown out. In the same way, had your camera exposed for the sky, your subject would have prob appeared underexposed and dark.

Its not always possible to keep all parts of an image in the dynamic range, especially on bright days with shadowy areas. There are way around it of course, by using grads, hdr that kinda thing.
 
Ok rob...thanks for that. Im guessing multi-point metering would aid this a bit...? Would a re-white balance help in anyway?!
 
If you were using center weighted or spot metering, that would explain your blown sky yes. You could try Evaluated Metering or whatever your camera calls it, this will do its best to correctly expose the whole scene. But like I mentioned, It will most likely expose for the background, and not the subject - which will result in a darkened subject. (kind of like a silhouette)
The white balance wont have any effect on the exposure, it will only effect the warmth of the image.

There are ways like using flash to balance out a back lit subject, but its kinda complicated to explain, and I dont want to confuse you further by overwhelming you with a ton of information.

I will of course if you like :D

Hope that helps a bit.
 
White balance only affects your colours, not the brightness. It's purely an exposure issue

edit- too slow
 
hi jon are you using a nikon by any chance ? mike
 
no mike...im using aFuji s200exr

Rob could you try to explain...but keep it simple-ish...?!

or...if there is a more simple solution it would be perfect as im just starting out!!

Cheers all!
 
Have a read of this thread, its quite long but its got a lot of advice from lots of people who know there stuff. Hopefully it will help you in the long run, but it could of course confuse you more. If there is anything specific you need explaining - post it back here and I'm sure someone will do there best to break it down for you :)

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=177617
 
I'm sure this will have been covered in the link, but one way you can get around this (if you're shooting landscapes for example) is to take one picture where your foreground is correctly exposed, then, take your exposure or aperture down a few notches and take another (for your sky). Then, using Photoshop or something similar, merge the two.
 
I had a similar problem with some snowy scenes, the sky was blown; this as described earlier was to do with metering for the subject which I did not want under exposed. I got around some by taking some additional pictures of the sky, exposed correctly and replaced the original blown sky in photoshop. This is not difficult if you sublject is clean lined.
 
It might help if you reduce you exposure, your EV settings, to bring out the colour in the sky and use a fill flash to compensate and expose your subject.
 
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