how would you expose this properly?

as i was making my way home today, i looked up at the buildings, and how they looked against a nicely lit sky..... started to think, how would i meter it so that the buildings came out properly exposed, and the sky wouldnt be blown.... couldnt figure it out.

i took a pic with my phone, focused on the sky, so it came out somewhat exposed (though the middle section is also blown), while the buildings are dark

so, i ask fellow POTNers... how would you expose this scene properly? would you meter for the buildings, allow the sky to blow out, and try to recover in post?

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/58640743@N05/5​941718768/

Try HDR, shoot 3 pics with normal exposure, +1, -1, then combine them in PS.
Or shoot Raw, then play with the exposure like the one above^^^, and combine them.
That's how we could exposed the building and the sky properly.

You could get a little closer to good exposure. But the range is most likely wider than the sensor can handle. Any kind of metering cant make the sensor see a wider range.The HDR route would be a good one. There is no need to make it a cheap pop art snapshot out of ot. But keep it realistic and it could be a good image.

id love to see how the sensor on my SLR would "see" this pics... unfortunately i dont want to drag my camera with me to work.

but in general, when shooting an urban scene with a bright light source in the back, how do you expose?

Spot meter for the portion of the scene you really want well exposed. In a situation like you have there, you're going to wind up with either blown highlights or blocked up shadows due to the large dynamic range presented there.

You could do as KVN mentions and do 3 bracketed shots to blend in PP...if your skills lean that way at all.

If you have an Android or Iphone you could install Exposure Pro, which will allow you "see" the scene as your camera does; you can snap a shot and then convert it to grey scale. Then it gives you an 18% grey square you can move around to match and find where you need to meter your real camera, for as close to a 'proper' exposure as you're going to get there.

Blown clouds are not recoverable, they are gone. Underexposed shadows can be lightened, but at the cost of noise and banding. That is if you shoot jpg. If you shoot RAW you get greater dynamic range so there is less chance of blown highlights and shadows contain more data and can be brightened better. Place the brightest spot at +2.5 EC and you will maximize shadow data.

Get a really, really bright flash?

hollis_f wrote in post #12767775
Get a really, really bright flash?

Smarty pants

Assuming PS skill, and considering that I am not really a fan of HDR -

Take two exposures, one metered for the sky and one metered for the buildings. Create a composite in Post.

hollis_f wrote in post #12767775
Get a really, really bright flash?

Or the mother of all reflectors!!

Ian.

Just put it on burst shooting mode and try a 2 stop handheld HDR. You can probably get away with handholding here if you manually blend in the sky, the definition between sky and building is clear enough that the slight mis-align from not having a tripod probably wouldn't ruin it.

I don't think you can get it a whole lot better than this without multiple exposures. Well, you could just play with curves in photoshop and even it out a little that way

HDR would be the only way to do it here, the dynamic range is too high to fit it all in one exposure.

TheRisingArms wrote in post #12771828
HDR would be the only way to do it here,

Not at all. Shoot raw, slightly overexpose for the sky, recover shadows in Lightroom or equivalent software, use PS or equivalent to remove noise if necessary.

I would approach this by taking the first shot where the sky is properly exposed and then take 2 or three more shots, each 2 stops brighter than the last. Make the adjustment via shutter speed not aperture. Then process them in Photomatix until the scene looks realistic without that obvious HDR look.