What the $*%@ am I doing wrong

I took this picture on a cloudy day with a polarizing filter and the sky looked better through the lens. I only did a little work on it with DPP. Is there anything else I can do with DPP, Picasa 3 or PhotoScape? I do not have Photoshop. Here is some picture info;
Shutter speed- 1/15
Aperture- f 5.6
ISO speed- 800
Thanx.
Sean

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What time of day was this?

What's wrong is the image is very overexposed.
Your sky is completely blown out, and the significant shadow detail starts at a tonal value of ~37.

I'd go with a combination of too high ISO, and too long a shutter speed.

The sky looks too blown out, your eyes cover a greater range than the camera can hence it looking better in the view finder. The way I get round it is to either take two pictures ( using a tripod ), exposing one for the sky and then one for the foreground. Using element open them up ontop of each other and blend them by using the eraser. I appreciate you don't have elements, I don't know if photoscape or dpp will help.
The second would be to go down the hdr route

About 5:10 PM on September 28th.

Camera does not have the range to capture both detail in the sky and still hold the shadows.

Your meter is catching a large chunk of dark trees so it exposed for that and let the sky blow out.

Simple Solution: Wait for a time of day when the Dynamic Range isn't so great
In Camera Solution: Graduated Neutral Density filter sufficient to hold the sky back
Software Solution: Two expsoures (one for sky + one for land) blended in Post Production

First off, why did you decide to shoot at ISO 800? You obviously had a tripod or some kind of support since you shot at 1/15 so why not just crank it up to 1 second at ISO 100?

Second, that exposure would have been too long for this scene. It's overexposed obviously. You have no black in the photo.

Third, why shoot it at 5pm? You could have saved yourself $50 (or more) on the filter and just waited another hour until sunset. Wait another thirty minutes and you'll hit twilight and get a poster quality image.

My suggestion, figure out when exactly twilight is for your area and your day. Go back and set your camera to ISO 100 F8 30 seconds on a tripod. Take one picture at the exact minute of twilight (civil twilight). Come back here and post the picture. I guarantee you $20 paypal it will look awesome.

why are you useing a polarizer on an overcast sky with no clouds? you should have used a 2 or 3 stop nd filter to bring the sky down.

HasRob wrote in post #8862746
why are you useing a polarizer on an overcast sky with no clouds? you should have used a 2 or 3 stop nd filter to bring the sky down.

A graduated ND would have helped but a solid ND would have yielded the exact same image.

It just would have taken longer to get there...

ISO way too high and shutter too long. I find that on overcast days you can get a decent shot with ISO 100 and just adjusting your F stop and shutter accordingly.

You've been given plenty of advice on how to not end up in this situation, and you're miles ahead by getting something good to start with and enhancing it than you are with something like this and correcting it, but a quick and dirty photoshop edit:

Here is the same scene. I took this tonight. Although not quite at twilight (the park was actually closed when I was in there) it is about 10 minutes before. I also did not do anything to it yet. This is from the RAW file untouched. I am going to see what I can do and will post when I do.
Shutter speed- 10
Aperture- f 8.0
ISO- 100
Lens- Tamron 28-80mm
Focal length- 35mm

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^^^ Now THAT'S Beautiful ^^^

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #8876560
^^^ Now THAT'S Beautiful ^^^

Thank you.

First version seems OOF - Second version is excellent... Nice colors....