Michael wrote ...
> I took a picture today. Set my camera to landscape mode for the hell of it
> to see what would happen. I need help with why the sky looks terrible, or
> better yet, why the sky didn't even come out right at all? The color was
> gray and kind of dark...and in the picture it's bright white but nothing
is
> displayed. What kind of balance is needed to pick up the sky also.
Overcast,
> not sunny??
>
> http://www.photopiks.com/nosky.jpg
>
It's slightly overexposed. Look at the image histogram in Photoshop or
whatever image editor you use.
Overcast weather can be a tough lighting condition for digicams. Their
dynamic range is not as good as traditional print film. The camera evidently
tried to expose for the dark areas, leaving the sky overexposed.
The solution would be to set the camera to a mode where you can dial in some
exposure compensation. On my Canon 10D, I use -1/2 stop exposure
compensation as my default (using "P" or program mode) to avoid overexposing
the sky. Check the image histogram to get it right. Changing your color
balance from "sunny" to "overcast" will alter the color tone somewhat, but
not the exposure AFAIK.
Do some experimenting with various exposure compensations and other mode
settings, it costs nothing.
I played a little with that image in Photoshop. By first reducing the
overall brightness and then boosting the darker tones with the Curves tool,
I was able to make the sky a natural-looking grey and even could retrieve
some cloud structures.
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