Over Exposed Skies

[simonfb100]

Hi there,

Need some advice please, I have recently taken up this hobby and have been taking a mixture of good and bad shots, I notice that in a lot of them they have over exposed skies!

Can anyone give me some tips and advice on putting this right please?

Many thanks,

Si,

[SteveJ]

Hi Simon,

First of all I'm no expert but as no one has replied I'll give it a go.

I've also had this quite recently with my Halfpenny Green pics and what I did was to highlight the sky in Photoshop CS3 and then alter the exposure, whether this is right or wrong I don't know but it worked for me.

Steve

[simonfb100]

Hi there Steve,
Thanks for that! I will have a little play with my editing program like you have suggested! I use lightroom and the canon program at the moment, You halfpenny shots have really come out well and you couldnt really tell they have been played about with (in a nice way)

Thanks for your time and reply!!

All the best,

Si.

[SteveJ]

Si,

There's probably a way to alter the metering within the camera but for the few shots I took I just found it easier to edit them in CS3, although I've never used light room I would imagine they're very similar. I'm on the laptop at the moment when I've got the desktop on later I'll edit this post and tell you the exact 'tools' I used.

Cheers

Steve

Edit: I used the quick selection tool highlighted the sky, changed the exposure and here's a comparison.





HTH

Steve

[simonfb100]

Hi Steve,
Wow what a difference! Thats great and thank you for doing that! I will give it a go a bit later on!

Thanks for your time and effort on this question!

All the best,

Si.

[RS2]

Simon,

Are you talking generally or flying shots or static shots etc.
Simply the direction in which you take the shot in relation to the sun can make a huge difference, also the human eye is much better at adapting for high contrast scenes than the camera !
Most Canon SLRs have a metering lock button on the the camera (like a little star), try composing your shot with less sky in the photo, ie move your viewpoint down lower than the actual picture you want to take. Push the shutter button part of the way which will start the cameras metering and focusing systems. Now once the camera has started metering push the little star 'exposure lock' button. Hopefully you should now see a little star appear in the viewfinder. Now take your finger off the shutter, recompose your picture (dont alter any zoom just bring your camera back up) and press the shutter again to take your picture. This second time when you press the shutter you sjhould only be operating the autofocus as the exposure has been locked in.
All you are doing with the above method is taking an exposure reading for an image without a large area of 'brightness' excluded, which should give you a better reading on your darker subject matter. The same could be done through manually metering or exposure compensation or bracketing, but exposure lock is often a quick and easy fix although it wont work all the time.