[cdd29]

It was a little late in the evening when that when this was shot, but that was what I had to work with. Still some decent light and not overcast. When I shot, I bracketed 7 shots. The one I posted was the better of the bunch. I would have used a graduated ND filter but that's not really an option on the 15-30 and I don't want to sink a lot of money into a filter holder and system for that lens, though I may end up having to.

[AfterPentax Mark II]

Agree with the others, take a number of shots (3 or 5) using raw, and do a HDR merge in software.

Or as an alternative you can cheat and add your own sky

Lovely solution in this case . I do not like to cheat myself, but I like this cheating!

[acoufap]

It was a little late in the evening when that when this was shot, but that was what I had to work with. Still some decent light and not overcast. When I shot, I bracketed 7 shots. The one I posted was the better of the bunch. I would have used a graduated ND filter but that's not really an option on the 15-30 and I don't want to sink a lot of money into a filter holder and system for that lens, though I may end up having to.

Did you answer the question about raw oder jpg shooting?

If you shoot only jpg you need to use a sufficient grad filter to compress the highlights. If it's not a long exposure remove the lens hood and use the grad without a filter holder. Simply position and hold the filter by hand - I think a 100mm filter should be sufficient for that - even with a DFA15-30 ... if the front element isn't protruding (I don't know about that because I don't own one).

If you shoot raw, only one exposure (to the right - ETTR technique) could be sufficient when using pseudo HDR technique in post, i.e. develop the raw using different compensations (16 bit tiff pro photo rgb) merge these and create your final result. Just an idea.

[Bob 256]

Fortunately you have a number of bracketed shots to work with. You probably are aware that the K-1 can be used to automatically shoot a series of bracketed shots? Of course, you can use manual exposure or exposure compensation, but the auto-bracket feature can save time and it will usually capture enough range for importing into an HDR app which, as others have said, will make this shot possible.

[pschlute]

I would have used a graduated ND filter but that's not really an option on the 15-30 and I don't want to sink a lot of money into a filter holder and system for that lens, though I may end up having to.

I use the Lee 150 system with the Pentax 15-30. It works well but is expensive.

If you have a series of exposures for the scene, you could supply a drop-box link and we could have a go at a HDR merge.

[cdd29]

Did you answer the question about raw oder jpg shooting?

If you shoot only jpg you need to use a sufficient grad filter to compress the highlights. If it's not a long exposure remove the lens hood and use the grad without a filter holder. Simply position and hold the filter by hand - I think a 100mm filter should be sufficient for that - even with a DFA15-30 ... if the front element isn't protruding (I don't know about that because I don't own one).

If you shoot raw, only one exposure (to the right - ETTR technique) could be sufficient when using pseudo HDR technique in post, i.e. develop the raw using different compensations (16 bit tiff pro photo rgb) merge these and create your final result. Just an idea.

I was processing the RAW, not the JPEG.

[Dartmoor Dave]

f/4.5 1/80, ISO400

The exposure that the camera chose really should have set your alarm bells ringing, as those are settings for very low light yet you mention the sky being bright. If the camera was going for settings in that range then it's entirely likely that even your seven shot bracket wouldn't have included a decent exposure.

The question is: How bright was the sky? You say that it was shot late in the evening, but even at that time of the day -- assuming the sun isn't actually setting -- the sky is usually only about a stop or two below Sunny 16.

Assuming that you haven't got an incident meter, the best thing would be to take a spot reading off the midrange greens in the trees to establish an exposure for the ground. No doubt in those conditions it would have resulted in overexposing the sky, but with the K-1 you can probably get away with at least two stops of that to recover in post-processing. Maybe three. The only question then would be what happens to the deepest shadows on the ground, but realistically you're just going to have to let them end up where they will. So a spot reading off the midrange greens and then checking the histogram to make sure the sky isn't too far overexposed would have been a good way to go. You could double-check that by spot metering the brightest part of the sky that you want to keep some detail in and mentally adding two to three stops. If that's within the range of the exposure that you metered off the greens then you should be fine.

What I'm saying is: Don't rely on the camera. Through-the-lens metering is only ever a compromise. Learn to trust your eyes. If the brightness of the sky wasn't much below its daylight level then you should have noticed that the camera was trying to wildly overexpose it. Then it would have been a simple question of by how much your camera's dynamic range would allow you to overexpose the sky and underexpose the ground in order to give you a raw file with the necessary tones preserved for editing.

[steephill]

In addition to the exposure advice above make sure to use base ISO (100). Every stop above that loses a stop in dynamic range so you lost 2 stops by using ISO 400.

[StiffLegged]

A different suggestion would be to shoot the same scene in better conditions: better light and more interesting weather would improve your chances of a rewarding image.

[DWS1]

This is an example when relying on the histogram while shooting is helpful. I suspect the histogram displayed a large spike on the right hand edge. I would just have kept decreasing the exposure until that spike was off the right edge. I have the histogram turned on so it overlays on the camera's rear display while reviewing photos. A quick glance tells me if I got the exposure close, or if I need to adjust and reshoot.

[35mmfilmfan]

Going back to the original shot, there seems to be a small amount of sky detail in the reflection in the water. I too would have tried bracketing exposures, trusting PP to open up the shadows sufficiently.