Canon A80 makes the blue sky white

[shaggybill]

Hi, newbie here. (obviously) My problem is that it seems that everytime I try to take a picture of landscape or anything outdoors for that matter, my camera whites out the sky. For example:

The sky was dark blue when I took this photo, and because the camera made it white, it pretty much ruined the picture. Is this fixable, or is it a "Canon" thing?

Thanks for any help.

[Cybershot455]

sb,

Does this really happen *every* time sky is included over a variety of lighting conditions? Or is it that you've only had the camera a while and by chance your landscapes are all taken in similar circumstances?

Below is an attached image I took on our recent hols with my Sony digicam. Note a similar effect to the sky (it was sunny) and that slight *misty* look to the trees at the top, again like your trees.

I know why mine looks like this, and I suspect yours is fora similar reason....it was taken against the light with the mainsubject (barn/grass) having a far lower amount of light.

Yourcamera metering has pretty correctly exposed the foreground but in doing so was forced to end up with a light sky.

In my case there was so much light from a lightly misted over bright middaysun that it was quite hard to look towards the top of the trees and the sky. In contrast there was no direct sun on the side of the boats you see.

I was actually very pleased my camera ended up with such a good result on Auto.

I don't know about the A80 but when I used an A75 on home trial I found it was slightly worse than the Sony in that it did tend to wash out the highlights in high contrast scenes.

Have you tried exposure compensation or manual mode to get the result you want. The A80 seems a good camera and can produce stunning blue sky scenes in the right circumstances.

Edit: Note I chopped off the top of the boat mast. Well when I lifted the camera to compose with the top of the mast included ittook injust enough extra sky such thatthe metering started to expose more for the sky and I knew the boats would be too dark. It is surprising how a subtle change of composition can affect the result when using fully Auto.

David

[lucky2505]

There's nothing wrong with your camera. Here is a site which does a good job of explaining why your picture looks that way:



http://members.aol.com/kevinoneil/nd.html

[Cybershot455]

Interesting link.... thanks Lucky.

David

[bsdunek]

This looks like an obvious application for a polarizing filter. I know some like to do everything in Photo Shop, but if the information isn't their you will have to fake it.

Try a polarizer - I think you'll like it. Of course it depends on the direction of the light. The sun at 90 deg. is best.



Bruce

[Mikefellh]

This can happen with ANY camera (digital or film), your light meter is being fooled. Here you have the darker greens which are properly exposed, but you've blown out the sky. Here's a site which explans this (pay close attention at what happens to the blue background in the duck pictures):
http://www.outdooreyes.com/photo40.php3

The way to make both the bright sky and dark forground come out is to use a blended exposure taking two photographs (meter one for the sky, and the other for the foreground):
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...xposures.shtml