Blowing out whites

canon400d

I am still experiencing blowing out the whites and skies. Yesterday I went into the Lake District and took about 200 landscape shots. I went early morning because I wanted the sun and the sweet light behind me. I was using an F stop of 22 with an ISO at 100. and AWB. I always use AWB unless shooting sunsets because I can change the AWB if necessary on CS4. I checked every shot in the LCD and the histogram was perfect. When I returned home I was amazed when I opened the majority of images in ACR to find the skies and whites of houses were blown out. Fortunately I was able to reduce the blown outs using the Recovery slider in CS4 together with a few other wee alterations. I was pleased the other shots turned out ok but there was no white in them.
Is there something I am not doing right because I thought with such a high F stop and a low ISO I was on the right track but obviously not.
Regards
Bob

MarkR

Are you using a polarizing filter on your lens? It might cut down on glare caused by unpolarized light.

I might be missing something, but it sounds like the camera just might not be able to capture the entire dynamic range of the scene. Is HDR an option?

Also, I'm confused about your statement re: small aperture, ISO. Are you metering manually or in another mode?

arodney

Shooting Raw? Seems so as you mention ACR. The histogram on the camera is based on a JPEG rendering from the camera. Pretty much ignore it. Clipping there will not result in actual Raw clipping. Use the Exposure slider (hold down alt/option key). Move it lower. Do you see clipping? If so, you really did clip the Raw data. But I suspect not as I've been able to "over expose" by 1.5 stops over the meter recommendation and have full highlight data in the Raw:http://www.digitalphotopro.com/technique/camera-technique/exposing-for-raw.html

canon400d

MarkR wrote:

Are you using a polarizing filter on your lens? It might cut down on glare caused by unpolarized light.

I might be missing something, but it sounds like the camera just might not be able to capture the entire dynamic range of the scene. Is HDR an option?

Also, I'm confused about your statement re: small aperture, ISO. Are you metering manually or in another mode?

I am using a Hoya polarizing filter on a 17-55 2.8 lens. I have various lenses but I found that this lens was quite sufficient for what I was photographing. I will try some of the images in HDR as I have Photomatix. The small aperture was F22 and an ISO at 100. I was metering it on my 40D.
Regards
Bob

canon400d

arodney wrote:

Shooting Raw? Seems so as you mention ACR. The histogram on the camera is based on a JPEG rendering from the camera. Pretty much ignore it. Clipping there will not result in actual Raw clipping. Use the Exposure slider (hold down alt/option key). Move it lower. Do you see clipping? If so, you really did clip the Raw data. But I suspect not as I've been able to "over expose" by 1.5 stops over the meter recommendation and have full highlight data in the Raw:http://www.digitalphotopro.com/technique/camera-technique/exposing-for-raw.html

Hi Andrew,
I have done as you have said and I tried an image and I did see clipping. I have been into photography for quite a while now and it is a great hobby now I am retired. I have always used the metering on the camera and checked it with the histogram. As a rule, I have found this works fine but as I say not every time. As I said in my last post I was using a 40D with a 17-55 2.8 with a Hoya HD UV 77 filter which was not cheap. Am I using a wrong type of filter?
Regards
Bob