Shooting with fog everywhere

Hey guys, I'm on a trip in Chicago right now and alot of my shots have been coming out overexposed like crazy and I have a feeling this is due to the fog that keeps rolling in. It's sunny out but the fog seems to be reflecting light like crazy so that everything seems off. I've tried turning down exposure levels by 2 or 3 stops from normal but that kinda kills the entire picture.

I've tried using spot metering on single buildings but then the sky gets blown out like crazy and becomes almost a pure white.

What can I do to get my shots??!! Last day in Chicago and I want to walk away with some breathtaking shots but my newb knowledge in photography is preventing me from doing so.

Thanks
-Jo

You cant expose for both you know that right? Use aeb and shoot some hdr.

You can always shoot exposing to the right and fix it in post processing. Fog can be a pain, I was shooting in fog this morning.

Sounds like the OP is shooting JPEG in the camera. Try shooting Raw mode, EttR, and increasing contrast and saturation in conversion.

But the best thing to do is to really study the character of the light and make photos that take advantage of that.

What is aeb?
I'll try HDR.

Also, how does shooting to the right make it able to fix in PP? wouldn't it be better to shoot to the left?

Also, I was shooting jpeg, I'll shoot raw. I did notice some of the raws I took had better exposures than the jpegs.
Also, what is Ettr?
And what do you mean character of light? I know it's easier to shoot in lower light situation to better control but I don't think your talking about that.

AEB = Automatic Exposure Bracketing. Useful for HDR.

HDR is useful for scenes with High Dynamic Range, such as strongly lit sunny areas and deep obscured shadowy areas. Foggy scenes are typically very low contrast and do not benefit from HDR, though changing lighting conditions with sun and fog combined might benefit.

In your histogram, there is more information gathered by the camera in the right hand side of the histogram. Once you shoot to the right, you can make adjustments with less chance of noise ruining the image. If you shoot to the left, and try to adjust the exposure there is more of a chance that the image will be noisy and not as good.

check these out, they explain it much better than I can.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorial​s/expose-right.shtml

http://www.cambridgein​colour.com …l-exposure-techniques.htm

By character of light, I mean to look intently at the light and see what is making the combination of sun and fog interesting. We get fog conditions here in Nova Scotia and back in San Francisco. Sometimes it is the brightness that is noteworthy and sometimes it is the way light is scattered that is interesting, particularly at night.

EttR is Expose to the Right. It means shoot in Raw mode and push your tones up to the right on the histogram while avoiding blinking highlights in important highlights. Then in conversion you push it back down to where it should be. It reduces shadow noise.

Shooting to the left is sometimes (rarely) necessary if you have these conditions combined: 1) contrasty scene, 2) Important highlights that must be saved, 3) Shadows that can be sacrificed. Shooting to the left increases noise after you pull the exposure up in Raw conversion, so you may have to use selective noise reduction in the shadows to subdue them.

Shooting in Raw mode gives you much more power to adjust the exposure and colour balance after the shot has been made than JPEG mode. With JPEG mode, the camera bakes into the picture whatever settings have been pre-selected. With Raw mode you can make those decisions deliberately and contemplatively at home without time pressure on your feet in the field. Raw gives you 12 to 14 bits to play with (about 10 stops effective dynamic range) whereas JPEG squishes the original image bits to 8 bits per channel and dynamic range may suffer a little.

Awesome tip man! Thanks a ton off to try

OP, welcome to Chicago, land of the white skies. As a life long Chicagoan, I feel your pain. There is little you can do other than to take two pictures, one exposed for the sky and the other for the subject and blend them together. Shooting raw helps as well. You can expose for the sky, or at least so that the sky is just shy of blowing out. Then in post processing, adjust the sky, in another layer pull up the background and blend.

Monito wrote in post #12452815
By character of light, I mean to look intently at the light and see what is making the combination of sun and fog interesting. We get fog conditions here in Nova Scotia and back in San Francisco. Sometimes it is the brightness that is noteworthy and sometimes it is the way light is scattered that is interesting, particularly at night...

The problem with Chicago is that it is not a nice hard fog lending itself to interesting lighting. It is a general low thin overcast and haze. This leads to a very uniform and surprisingly bright white sky.

Ahhh ty very much gjl, I will try that instead. I definitely can no relate with what you mean by the surprisingly overcast that results in a super white sky.