photos with washed out sky

[adavem]

a lot of my photos from my recent vacation have just a white sky(i have a a620,used auto most of the time tried p a bit too)i was very dissapointed in the results.is there a way can touch up or repair the picures that isnt very complicated that can make them a little more pleasing to the eye?

[Jon]

An overexposed sky will pretty much require you to go into PhotoShop to either monkey with the contrast or paste in a whole new sky.

What you can do when you're taking the original picture to minimize this problem is shoot for the histogram - make sure that it doesn't bunch up all the way at the right side. This may require you to underexpose the overall picture by setting some minus Exposure Compensation (same button as the "Trash Can"). It'll leave the main picture somewhat underexposed though. You can also try reducing the contrast setting in your image preferences. Both these will require you to use one of the "letter" or "Creative" zone settings, like P, Av or Tv. The second can also be applied to "M"; the first isn't necessary in there since you "manually" set the exposure to the desired underexposure reading every time you meter.

The problem is that digital sensors (and film, too) don't have enough "latitude" - they can't capture the full range of brightness that our eyes can handle effortlessly. So you have to fool the camera somewhere, either right up front or by post-processing.