gooble wrote in post #8063403
The best solution is to take this near sunset or sunrise depending on which way it's facing.
Cameras aren't capable of capturing all the range of light in this image. You can brighten things up in post but it will not ever look very good and at least not as good if you'd taken it in better light.
All good advice. Still, if you're on holiday and see something like this you really, really want to capture but you can't wait around for the right light, then you can use High Dynamic Range photographic techniques and exposure bracketing. There may not be any inbuilt support in the OP's compact camera, but as M mode was used it's not a stretch to try...
Basically, one image can't capture the bright sky and dark shadows, so take a picture like you did where neither's done too well, then a couple more where each is exposed properly, varying only the shutter speed (not aperture as that affects focus too). Ideally you'd do all this on a tripod, but if you have to do it by hand then fair enough, just try to minimise camera movement between shots.
Later, you can use software to get the detail for each area of the photo out of the shot that captured it best. If your current software doesn't support it, there are free (e.g. GIMP, qtpfsgui) and commercial offerings (Photoshop, Photomatrix...).
Cheers, Tony
