taking photographs on a dark and cloudly day

[nicaev]

Good morning everyone.
I have found myself getting very annoyed with myself recently I have joined a photography course which I am very pleased with some of the results that I have achieved on my wildlife shoots so I started to try some landscapes they are not good. I have tried to take pictures of some mountains but the weather conditions have not been kind, very cloudy and some what dark. The pictures have come out crap to be honest. Is there anyway I can improve them. I don't have any filters to speak of yet plus the meter on my camera is telling me that I have the correct exposure the cloud line looks washed out and the foreground looks dark.
Camera and lenses eos 7D, 24-70mm L series and a sigma 70-300mm sorry to have gone on bit
Thanks Nigel

[Cathus]

the trouble with white or grey skies is they tend to dominate the exposure calculations and muck up the exposure of the land depending on how much sky is in the shot & which exposure mode you're in.

If you have a big difference in exposure levels between the land and sky then there really is no way you can expose both perfectly in one shot without using filters to compensate for the big range of tones as a digital sensor is not sensitive enough to capture every tone between pure black and pure white.

There are 2 ways to sort it out. I was taught that you expose for the land and filter for the sky. In other words, take a shot which gets you good exposure on the land - this will probably mean the sky is blown out and too bright. You then take a reading exposing for the sky - the difference in stops between the 2 exposures is the filter you put over the sky. So if you have a 3 stop difference between exposures, put a 3 stop ND filter on the sky, then take your shot at the right exposure for the land and the sky should come in good too.

As you haven't got filters you'll need to take 2 shots - you can get away hand held with very careful placement of the images in software but a tripod is better. You take one shot for the land, one for the sky and then mix them together in software putting one over the top of the other and deleting or masking the under/over exposure section to reveal the good parts of both shots.

You could also take several shots at different exposures and use HDR software to merge them all together automagically.

[nicaev]

Thankyou for your reply. I do have a very good tripod which I use a lot for some wildlife I take. The one thing not sure of is the filters that I need can you give me some advise either screw filters or drop in filters which I understand is the cheaper option.
Many thanks

[jools-elliott]

For balancing the exposure and the sky, it is better to use the square/ drop-in type of filter such as those made by Lee or Hi-Tech.

Cost wise, you always pay for what you get. It also depends on your own budget as to what you can afford.

With both Lee and Hi-Tech, you have an adaptor ring that mounts onto the front of the lens. From there, you have the filter holder itself and then lastly the filters.

The specific filter type you need is neutral density graduated filters. They come in the following:

0.3 = 1 stop
0.45 = 1.5 stop
0.6 = 2 stops
0.75 = 2.5 stops
0.9 = 3 stops

Lee and Hi-tech do a 1.2 (4 stop). You don't tend to see the 1.2 a lot from Lee so not sure if it is a custom order.

Which one you need depends on the difference in stops between the sky and the land. By far the best explanation on how to use them is in a book by Phil Malpas called Colour.