Help with washed out sky

[Mike Coulter]

I need some suggestions on dealing with the sun for an outdoor
photo. I recently took a team photo of my son's soccer team. It was
about 10 o'clock in the morning with the sun about 30 degrees above the
horizon with no cloud cover. I don't like taking these types of photos
with the sun to my back because the subjects all squint to avoid
staring into the sun. So, I took the photo with the sun at about 10
o'clock with respect to me. Using a flash to fill in the shadows, the
photo turned out OK, but the sky was washed out on the sun side (my
left) and blue on my right. I would really like to figure out the best
way to take one of these photos and get a blue sky. I live in Arizona,
so we have about 300 days a year of blue skies.


mike





Canon 40D


Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-4.5 II USM lens


Canon 220 external flash

[Sinh Nhut Nguyen]

The maximum flash sync speed of the 40D is 1/250. You need to turn on the high speed sync of your flash to allow faster shutter speed. I don't know if the 220 has that function.

[Keith B]

Use manual setting on camera. Set the f-stop to 16 and set the flash to manual and full power. Experiment you may have to open the aperture up a little if the flash isn't powerful enough.

[Colin]

I'd suggest playing with a polarizing filter, and then play with the curves.