S3-IS brightness/overexposure issues

I've been having difficulties with my S3-IS when taking outdoor landscape photos. Typically, if the center of the frame is below the horizon, the land looks good but the sky is completely overexposed. Sometimes a blue sky will actually look white, and it's especially bad on hazy days. If the center of the frame is above the horizon, the sky will look normal but the land will be unusually dark and underexposed. Generally, I take these kinds of pictures in the landscape mode. I've had some luck lowering the brightness/exposure setting to somewhere less than 0 but greater than -1; sometimes this solves the problem, but other times, the whole picture turns out too dark. Is there a more effective way to deal with this problem?

RG

Unfortunately the problem's that there is a greater range of brightnesses than your camera's sensor can cope with.The solution is to either 1) thae 2-3 exposures at different EC settings and combine them in post-processing or get what's called a graduated neutral density filter, which will "hold back" the sky, giving a less extreme contrast range.

it seems you're using center metering mode... this way, the camera will expose the pic in order to match the perfect exposure level AT THE FOCUS FRAME (dead center of the picture, unless you have moved the frame)..

this way, the camera will expose correctly that section of the composition, but will over or underexpose the other areas...

you should try using matrix evaluating mode (read the manual, i don't have an s3, so i wouldn't know where it's on your manual). With this mode, the camera will divide the hole picture into different frames, and analize the best OVERALL exposure setting needed.

Check your manual for metering modes It won't work miracles if the degree of contrast is high, in that case you should try some filters

I seem to remember that the S3 has a spot meter option (I don't have mine anymore so I hope I'm not incorrect). Are you by chance using that? If so, try switching it back to evaluative for landscapes. It will make a huge diff.

Otherwise, if you can't attachs an nd, try metering on a mid tone (grey or light brown and then recompose and shoot).

Use your "My Colors" feature and set the Custom Color settings to: Contrast -2, (also a personal preference of Sharpening -1, Red -1). Even with this much reduced contrast, and using various metering modes, I will still blow out highlights on occasion, so I set my EV (exposure compensation) to -1/3 f/stop as my default shooting mode. This seems to retain most of the detail in shadows as well as get few blown-out highlights.