Canon Rebel XT - white balance questions

[crazy_carl]

Hello all - I was wondering if you could give me some pointers. I have a Rebel XT and am using a 28-135 IS lens w/ UV filter and have been taking quite a few landscape shots in AZ and NM recently. I've been having trouble keeping my shots from being "white-washed" with all the sunlight unless it is early morning or late evening. I've tried using the "sun" setting and also incorporating a polarizer but I'm still having trouble. Do you guys have any suggestions on how to best keep landscape shots from being white-washed? Should I be using a custom white balance setting? Any tips you might have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

[deckcadet]

Hi Crazy Carl,

It sounds more like you're having an exposure issue than white balance issue unless you're also getting major color problems in the areas that aren't white washed.

Could you post some sample pictures?

It sounds to me like you're overexposing the scene. You may also be getting lens flare and ghosting.

What metering mode are you using? Have you tried shooting in any of the non-full-auto modes? (i.e. P, Av, Tv, M)

[crazy_carl]

deckcadet,

You may be correct - I'm certainly not an expert. What settings would you suggest? Is there a way in Photoshop to attempt to correct this after the fact? Thanks for your reply. I'll attach a sample later after I resize it for the forum.

[deckcadet]

Overexposure is unfortunately very difficult to correct for and if you've shot JPEG instead of RAW it's even worse. I'll reserve judgement until I see the images though. It may be something else entirely.

[mwfanelli]

You may also be getting lens flare and ghosting.

If this is the case, you will also want to remove that UV filter. You really don't need it anyway and it can cause all sorts of problems such as this. However, I agree it sounds like an exposure and DR problem.
.

[DEvianT]

On a tripod

Pick a midtone in the sky expose for that. Take one picture. The sky will look great the ground will look extremely dark.

Pick a midtone on the ground and expose for that. Take one picture. The ground will look great the sky will burn out to white.

Make the two shots two layers in photoshop with the correctly exposed sky on top. Erase the underexposed ground to reveal the correctly exposed ground below.

Alternatively buy a set of Neutral Density graduated filters and learn how to use them to balance the brightness of the sky vs ground so your cameras dynamic range can expose the whole scene correctly.

Both solutions are about the same difficulty.