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I took this picture of a tree & as you can see, I blew the sky completely out. I am including my setting. I assume my shutter speed was too slow or am I going at this all wrong.
SS 1/80, f8.0, iso 100, Raw, WB/Cloudy & AI Serrvo

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The blowing out of the sky is the result of a combination of shutter speed, aperture and ISO, the exposure triad. The three factors work together to determine the lightness or darkness of the image, so you can't blame just one of them. But if we assume you want to keep aperture the same and ISO can't be lowered, then yes, to prevent the sky blowout you would need a higher speed. However, this would also darken the tree, so the photo will need some special treatment - lighting the tree with a flash, brightening the darker tones in post-processing (best done to a RAW image), or blending two exposures together.

Since it was overcast there was not much to work with in the first place. Perhaps a 1/2 over exposed which can be corrected during PP but should you should always pay attention to exposure. This is a tough shot because of the sky itself and the flat light so don't be too hard on yourself. In advanced PP you can import blue skies or HDR tone mapping to get some life out if this shot. Not much you could do to get a colourful shot from this scene out of the camera.

You should also pay attention to how level your image is as well. It is a bit off.

Thanks tzalman & digital paradise

You might want to try this approach http://daystarvisions.​com/Docs/Tuts/DCExp/pg​1.html, but it won't help when there's too much contrast between the brighter and darker areas. If the contrast is greater than your camera sensor can record, you will have to compromise and decide whether you want to keep the subject properly exposed while over-exposing the highlights, expose for the sky and have the subject too dark, or follow one of the suggestions above such as exposure bracketing or changing the light ratios by using something like fill flash or a neutral density filter.

Thanks stsva

You are facing a big challenge, scenes with a high dynamic range! You will need to process this type of photo. The best thing to do is determine the exposure that will make sure you get what you need and not sacrifice what you want to keep.

If you need elements of the sky, you will end up likely underexposing the foreground a bit, and then will need to "boost" a bit in post-processing.

Check out shooting in Raw -- you will get more latitude in post-processing -- check out our RAW Conversion Thread!

Thanks Tony

Dale, here are some links to some "projects" of mine where I had to deal with those types of conditions and various approaches I've taken with Raw and a Raw converter. These are from that Raw conversion thread I linked to earlier:

Exposing for the sky and then recovering the shadows:

https://photography-on-the.net …p=12626872&post​count=3896

Expose To The Right and recover the sky:

https://photography-on-the.net …p=12699441&post​count=3946

A bit of both:

https://photography-on-the.net …p=12763110&post​count=3984

If you scroll through that thread, you will see probably hundreds of similar "projects"!

Hope it helps you and encourages you!