Another blown out sky picture...Help

[locky]

Hi, What would your advice be for shooting a subject and trying not to have a blown out sky? Here's a sample picture. Thanks for any help.

[neumanns]

Reflector or flash... Looks like the sky was almost there, may could have underexposed a stop and then brought her back up in PP.

[elysium]

Reflector or flash... Looks like the sky was almost there, may could have underexposed a stop and then brought her back up in PP.
Yeah. Fill flash also could be useful for this.

[Gatorboy]

Expose for the sky and use flash to fill in the shadow areas, in this case it would be your subject.

[locky]

This might sound stupid but how would one expose for the sky with the XT.

[neumanns]

"M"

[Vetteography]

This might sound stupid but how would one expose for the sky with the XT.

If you have a flash, the easiest way is to put the camera on, say AV, aim past the model to the brighter part of the sky, push the shutter release half way so the camera meters for the brighter light, then hit the AE Lock button (the *). Recompose, focus on the model and shoot. Your flash will light the subject.

With no flash, change to M, do the same basic thing. Meter the brighter background, set your shutter and aperature to the right levels for the brighter background, then focus in on the model and take the picture. The sky will be right, your model will be dark, but you can fake the fill light in post.

[WilliamL]

ok my question is this... I set my camera to "M" meter the bright sky and set everything... OK .. I have a 588EX flash.. now would I incress the power, leave it at 0, or decress the power for the fill? I've been fighting this and I never can get it just right..

[sgogula]

ok my question is this... I set my camera to "M" meter the bright sky and set everything... OK .. I have a 588EX flash.. now would I incress the power, leave it at 0, or decress the power for the fill? I've been fighting this and I never can get it just right..

I have the same question. Let's see what experts would say about this.

[pridash]

To get a richer blue sky, the best thing to do is meter for the sky,then underexpose by 1 stop and then add 1 stop to Flash Exposure Compensation in ETTL mode.

[JeffreyG]

ok my question is this... I set my camera to "M" meter the bright sky and set everything... OK .. I have a 588EX flash.. now would I incress the power, leave it at 0, or decress the power for the fill? I've been fighting this and I never can get it just right..

The flash exposure is totally seperate from the ambient exposure. You control the ambient with ISO, shutter speed and aperture. Set this so the sky does not blow out.

Then mount the flash and let the camera control the flash exposure in E-TTL mode. For fill the camera tends to overexpose with flash, so I suggest starting with a minus 1 stop flash exposure compensation (FEC) dialed in.

[Sickness]

Will this work with a camera without a xxxEX flash unit? The only one I have is the one that pops up on the camera and I get this problem sometimes. I want a rich blue sky and after taking the picture it's completely white.

[JeffreyG]

Will this work with a camera without a xxxEX flash unit? The only one I have is the one that pops up on the camera and I get this problem sometimes. I want a rich blue sky and after taking the picture it's completely white.

Yes, you can fill with the onboard flash. The only serious limitation is that you cannot high speed synch with the onboard. This means in bright light you will probably need to shoot the portrait stopped down pretty far and so the DOF will be large. This can be a good thing depending on what the background is, so experiment with it.

[Vetteography]

What software are you using to process your shots? If you have one that let's you do masking, then you could still expose for the background, use the on-camera flash to light up the subject and then do some adjusting afterwards.

I think the problems with the on-camera flash are that it is weak, it is unidirectional, covers too wide of an arc and is too close the axis of the lens. You can work with that if you are creative and there are some modifiers you can get that fit over your flash that will help some, but it will never be as flexible as an off-camera flash.

[Sickness]

Yes, you can fill with the onboard flash. The only serious limitation is that you cannot high speed synch with the onboard. This means in bright light you will probably need to shoot the portrait stopped down pretty far and so the DOF will be large. This can be a good thing depending on what the background is, so experiment with it.

Just to clarify, when you say "stopped down pretty far" does that have anything to do with changing the shutter speed / aperture or is:

http://community.mpix.com/blogs/mpix/metering.jpg

the -2, -1, 0, 1, 2 ?

[sadatk]

Stopping down means making the aperture smaller (f-stop larger).

The -2, 1, 0, 1, +2 are your exposure compensation (EV) readings.