Outdoor, full sun shooting

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bluegrey

Active member
Does anyone know the best settings for this? I can't seem to find the right balance between having my subjects bright enough but the sky dark enough to see the blue rather than it being blown out. It's either one or the other and I hate the sky being blown out.

Thanks in advance.
 
Throw a grad ND filter on the camera or else you'll need to light your subject to bring it up to the approximate exposure of the sky.
 
Not Settings, Technique

Not Settings, Technique

Settings won't help your problem.

A few general rules:

Don't shoot between 10:30 am and 2:30pm (when the sun is at a high angle, creating shadows under your talent's eyes.)

Shoot with the sun behind you. This way, your subject and background (skyline) will both be properly exposed. Just watch so that your own shadows aren't cast onto the scene!
 
You an also use a polarizer to help darken the blue of the sky. Linear polarizers work just fine on the HVX so save your money and don't bother buying a circular polarizer.

Put additional lighting on your subject with reflectors. I use a foil-covered 4' x 4' board sometimes to do this -- but the talent might have a hard time tolerating the brightness of the board.

If you get real desperate you can use secondary color correction in Final Cut Pro. Have the secondary corrector select just for the blue sky and hype the density and/or saturation. I've done that succesfully, too.
 
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