Working around Overcast Sky's...

Howdy All,

I am going to be 'working' under overcast skys much of the day the next four days. We get a marine layer/fog like conditions every day this time of year. The skys will clear toward early to mid-afternoon but I am wondering what is the best tequniques to perhaps get some detail of those skys.

Current limitations is no CPL for my 10-20, 28-135. I do have one set to land sometime today for the 55-200mm and the 70-300mm as they both are 58mm. If that is the only option I can have CPL's here tomorrow if I order withing a few hours. Of would something like graduated ND's work better?

My common sense tells me that CPL's will simpy make everything darker and I will end up defeating the point of the thing in PP.

Here is an example of the skys I will be working with:

40d, f7.1, 1/400, ISO 200

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Shoot raw, bump up the recovery slider, add fill light if necessary, and bump up the blacks to compensate for the fill light.

Good question,

I guess black and white is not an option

You can bring some textures from the clouds if properly exposed but it is a 100% certainty that the proper exposure for the clouds will be a disaster for the subject.
One solution is to take two exposures and the comine both using layers in Gimp or PS.

I'm not very fond of Grip's edition it has a very strong Magenta tint.

Luigi

griptape wrote in post #5790559
Shoot raw, bump up the recovery slider, add fill light if necessary, and bump up the blacks to compensate for the fill light.

A CPL or ND grad would help, but it's not right for every situation. What exactly are you going to be shooting?

Wow...that is a lotta magenta in the clouds...but I get the idea...

As to what I am shooting, exactly what you see there. It's an outdoor event here in town. Everything from people to landscapes. People and things should be easy as the sky will likely not come into play often. But the wider shots of events and the crowd will surely have sky issues.

Is my best bet, as I am doing everything in RAW, to allow for the sky so it's not totally blown then adjust levels from there in PP?

I know once the sun is out things might be easier, but a good portion of things will be in full sunlight so I have to hotfoot it back this afternoon to hope UPS showed with the CPL's I ordered last night. I know they are on the truck at least. Ordered three groups of stuff and each came on a different carrier...still for just $3.99 extra for overnight I ain't complaining.

Basically today is going to be mostly getting a feel for the shots and such as nothing really gets going until later this evening then increases steadly though Saturday afternoon, which will be my BIZZY DAY...

luigis wrote in post #5790616
Good question,

I guess black and white is not an option

Nope...some for fun and something different, but color is the rule of the day...

Otay, Panky...that was what I was thinking...the cloudy sky is a bust, just adjust to blown as little as possible and hope that in PP I can recover the details? Perhaps some AEB? Or does AEB really matter when using RAW?

I have CS3 Extended so layers are doable I just have not gotten the hang of it...only into my 2nd week with CS3 but it's so slick I am working with it every day. I do recall a thread that discusses HDR which contained a link to some info on using layers effectively. I'll see if I can hunt that up later this evening.

My eyes have trouble with blues and purples, and I went a little too far with the temperature adjustment, and then I had to paint the sky in and I'm terrible at picking colors from a pallet. But your raw file would probably have enough information to restore a good bit of it from the picture itself. Just a 15 second illustration, not an actual attempt to fix the picture.

griptape:

I gottcha...I kinda figured you were just giving an example. My issue is not so much the coloring of the clouds but the intensity. They are sort of a solid soft grey-ish anyway, but they are just really brighter, by a long bit, than the subjects. I know later in the day it won't be as big an issue but I was hoping to find something to let me shoot around it in a "lesser of two evils" sorta fashion.

I do appreciate what you were showing though...I will admit on first glance I kinda chuckled and sort of thought "...now that is putting lipstick on a pig if ever I saw it..." hehehehehe....ifwe can't larff at ourselves who in the heck can we laugh at...right?

Oh, I did neglect to mention that yesterday the light everywhere in town did have a slightly yellow/amber cast to it...for a few minutes I thought maybe there was a oxidizer tank explosion out at the AFB and nobody wanted to tell us we could kiss our rear ends g'bye...

Another option:
Download EnfuseGUI (it is free) it is a tool to blend different exposures of the same image without doing an HDR. Then you can take a bracketed shot at -3, 0 and +3 exposure and merge the exposures for a better result. If that is not enough then take even more exposures if you "center the first exposure at -3 and the second one at +6 you can get -6, -3, 0, +3, +6, +9 exposures and that will get all the details from both clouds and subject.

Just an idea and it is free

Luigi

oh, cool, I can try that on the landscapes for sure...great idea!! thanks!

You may also consider using the uniform hazy sky to your advantage as a built in mask for compositing a nice sky into the images in post. The uniform white of the overcast sky should make it fairly easy to isolate and mask for compositing. As long as there are not too many reflective surfaces in your shots that would give away the fact that you inserted a nice blue sky with fluffy Simpsons cumulus clouds in at post.... This way you can concentrate on exposing for the foreground and not worry about the sky - just be careful to avoid fringing around the high-contrast edges of the subject. Using flash to get the exposure more even across the subject and sky is another alternative.

Good luck,

Kirk

Perhaps something of my own that I have the full data in tact of would be a better example.

Original RAW with flat settings:

really nice tansformation griptape!

On my sky it's just a flat grey layer of cloud-like stuff, typical marine layer kinda cloud/fog. So there might not be the contrast to work with hidden in there. I am going to try for sure.

I really like the last one, it has a surreal look to it...nicely done...plus she looks as if she is just having a BALL playing water-tennis...hehehehe...I remember doing that stuff at her age...such fun!

oh, here is another pass at just fiddling with levels and a bit different crop...awk!! waaaay too much green:

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