Photographers from the northern parts of the planet (like Scandinavian countries) know this problem very well. The sky is so much brighter than anything below. It is of course necessary to compensate by selecting +compensation. Other than that, high contrast subjects are really difficult to manage. The best advice is to use the Photoshop CS tool that's called "contrast and highlight", which can brighten the darker parts and add colour to very bright parts of a digital image. Another solution is to use a grey half-filter in order to darken the sky. Nothing's wrong with the camera - that's just the way a meter works. Matrix or not. Regards Jens
Jens Bladt http://www.jensbladt.dk -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sendt: 31. december 2005 21:39 Til: [email protected] Emne: Re: Burned sky, underexposed subject In a message dated 12/29/2005 9:16:15 AM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Your page wouldn't come up. But in general, when shooting RAW you should expose to preserve your highlights right at the limit. When processing in the PSCS RAW converter, adjust the highlight level with exposure slider, then bring your midtones back up to where you want them with the brightness slider and adjust the black with the shadow slider. Don't expect a RAW to look good right out of the camera. Paul ======= Good advice that Paul has given. At least, in my experience. And I am not the most experienced here by a long shot. But here is my inexperienced experienced .02 cents... Shooting RAW, yes, means more post processing, but on the whole it also means one can make photos actually better. It really gives one a great deal of control over how they turn out. And the latitude is somewhat similar to slide film, so don't expect things you can't have (you still might have to use a ND filter in some situations as someone mentioned). Except for the fact that post processing can improve the latitude -- in a sense. Digital has some advantage over film, and RAW has some advantages over JPEG. But digital and RAW are still not magical. It's still photography and there are still limitations. However, a lot of limitations can be dealt with with post processing. If you'd play with them a bit, your photos will be fine. Marnie aka Doe
