Blown-out Sky

I'm a bit puzzled as to why the sky is washed-out in the examples illustrated. Conditions were sunny, blue sky and white clouds.

K5 set to AV mode, F11 and auto ISO, centre weighted metering.
Metered on the trees on the far bank of the lake. CPL fitted on the lens (Sigma 18-50).

The first image is a JPG straight from the DNG (no processing), second image the JPG from the camera, last DNG processed in Lightroom 4.










If it's human error, I can live with that, if I know where I went wrong.
Other images from other locations around the lake didn't suffer the washed-out skies.

Regards
Adrian

I would think it's the Centre-Weighted metering that did it.

Sunlit clouds reflect a *lot* of light - they're incredibly bright, much brighter than blue sky.

The centre of the shot is quite dark, so if the exposure chosen by the camera was weighted to that, it's not surprising it blew out the sky.

Switch on the Highlight/Shadows feature, and use the multi-segment metering option rather than CW or Spot (which would have been even worse).

I'd guess you were thinking that you wanted the detail in the far bank to be exposed right, and of course it is. However, that approach will often result in blown out skies.

Happily, retrieving detail (especially from raw files rather than JPG) from dark areas is often very successful with the K-5, so although multi-segment metering will get you darker centres and foreground when it's compensating for the bright sky, you can recover that usually.

This is an example of a scenario in which you could take the risk of ignoring "always shoot raw" and put your trust in the capabilities of the K-5's excellent electronics and firmware - in this case the effective HDR Capture feature.

Ensure that the Expanded Sensitivity and Highlight Correction settings are both turned On. Set Multi-segment metering and the lowest ISO value of 160. Set the file format to 4 star 16MP Jpeg. Tick Auto Align and set HDR Capture to Auto (this gives a natural realistic image). If you are hand-holding the camera, Shake Reduction should be On, and keep as still as possible during the exposure. When you press the shutter release the camera takes 3 shots, then combines them into a usually pretty good HDR Jpeg image, which still retains plenty of data for tweaking on computer.

Alternatively, of course, if you want to do all the hard work youself, you could bracket several Raw exposures, then process them in HDR software on the computer.

Philip

The trouble with all the fancy electronics is that it takes no account of subject movement.

It doesn't take much of a breeze for all the leaves to move slightly between exposures. At a distance, you can't see it as blur, so much as a slightly unsatisfying lack of detail.

Seriously, HDR mode has its place, and if the subject is really still, fill your boots by all means. And I agree with having Expanded Sensitivity and Highlight Correction switched on.

But there's so much detail in the shadows with the K-5 that I do think it's simpler, simply to expose for the sky you don't want to burn out, and pull up the shadows afterwards.

Its better with raw, but far from impossible with JPG too.

Nice compo!

In that sort of scene you could use an ND grad, or or as Chris says, meter for the highlights and rescue the foreground in PP. You could also attempt a 'pseudo HDR' shot in PP.

Alternatively you could try a 2-shot blend; works very well for tripod shots.

With around a 14 EV range the K5 can do much more straight from camera. I agree about the metering comments BUT it is also down to the user to check as they go although the LCD screen review can be a sod when very bright conditions. The histograms of course give the game away if any sudden peaks.

Avoiding burnt out skies has been part of landscape photography as long as I can remember. Those of us old enough were lucky to even have a light meter in our film cameras! At least nowadays we don't have to worry about running out of film when bracketing shots or the wait and cost of processing

I personally only press the save as RAW button when I have an expected difficult shot. Rare with these amazing modern cameras.

Thanks for all the replies, all greatly appreciated.

I'll try using milti-segment metering, see how I get along.

Coming from the Kx, where the camera didn't align the built-in HDR images, this option doesn't cross my mind on the K5 (must now remember that this is also an option).

I'm still amazed by the amound of detail that can be retrieved from the K5, shooting RAW, where a 'bad' shot turns out good

I always have my Cokin GND filter in the camera bag, and this was deployed after the above shots were taken.

Regards
Adrian

If you wish to retain the sky detail, I would take a few test shots, then use the exposure where the histogram shows the bright areas as far to the right as possible, but without any burn-out. Use this as your setting for shooting the pictures and then bring out the shadow detail in post-processing. Best to shoot in RAW. The K-5 is so good in the dark areas, you will see very little noise. If you have Photomatix, you can adjust the RAW file and save it at different exposures, then blend them back together. This will produce detail in highlights and shadows, but be careful you don't end up with an unnatural result (be subtle with Photomatix and it is great).

Regards
David

Yes, Adrian, when you come across these tricky light scenes remember to try the HDR module in your K-5 - you have paid for its inclusion, so you may as well give it a chance and, possibly, save yourself some work!

OK, so HDR outputs only a Jpeg file but, although there is obviously more data to play with in Raw files, some Raw shooters do tend to overstate their case. Jpegs from the K-5 contain loads of detail, so they can be tweaked quite extensively in PhotoShop (or similar) and still retain very good quality for viewing in at least 16 inch prints or on screen.

It is just important to remember a couple of simple rules - always keep the original and process only a copy of the file; also, load and save as few times as possible and with the Jpeg compression set to minimum.

Most photographers should know that Jpegs can be edited, as the extreme example below shows - it started from above as a Web-quality 87kB Jpeg, and it was processed in PaintShop Pro X4. From the K-5's HDR module, there would be an already quite reasonable image to start with, and any required fine tuning would be able to work on the vast amount of data retained in its high-quality 10MB Jpeg file.

[IMG]http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb327/MrB154/Reworked%20Photos/DNGJPEG1.jpg[/IMG]
Cheers.
Philip

Thanks for the advice David & Philip.

Regards
Adrian

Has anybody mentioned exposure bracketing?

If not, a series of images taken at 0.5 or 1 stop apart might have saved this image, with a bit of blending or HDR that is.

If NDgrads aren't available and multi-shot HDR not possible (I don't think I've ever used it anyway) I find the K5 so good at handling noise it's more than possible to underexpose by 2/3 stops to retain highlight detail and then just recover it in post-processing.

Obviously that's not possible here, if you want to recover the shot then maybe create several files from the single raw all exposed differently (-2, -1,0,+1 etc) and then run it through photomatics or similiar...this method can work well with the underexposure method too

Simon

I know it would be shutting the door after the horse has bolted as such but does lightroom 4 give you the option to add digital nd grads in camera raw as Photoshop does ?

If so that may help here

Yes it does, as did LR3.

Again thanks for all the advice and suggestions, it seems that the HDR option is a very viable option (must give in built-in feature a go).

Regards
Adrian