when shooting i sometimes find i cant get the right setting to capture the right amount of light and still keep the detail in the clouds.
i played with the av and tv modes to try and get it right but i didn't really manage to get it how i wanted. i often found that i either got the detail in the foreground but the clouds were bleached out or the clouds looked good and the foreground was too dark.
Welcome to the world of exposure latitude. Basically if the exposure for the sky is over two stops higher than for that of the land there's not really much you can do in camera in regards to changing settings depending on exactly how big a difference there is. Things you can try are:
Set your camera to Evaluative metering mode which splits the frame into something like 35 zones and works out the average exposure for them all.
When you take your meter reading make sure you DON'T meter from the brightest or darkest parts of the frame as this will either make the highlights be over exposed or the low lights under exposed. Instead you want to look for something that has the reflective quality of 18% gray as all cameras light meters are calibrated for 18% gray - This is why if you take a photo in the snow the snow often looks more gray than white.
If the conditions cannot be controlled by these methods than basically the scene is beyond the exposure latitude that your sensor can handle. The only things you can now do are:
Use graduated neutral density filters. These come in different strengths and are basically a square piece of glass which is gray at the top and clear at the bottom. The idea is that you put the gray bit over the sky and the clear bit over the land and this evens out the exposure latitude reducing the brightness of the sky.
The other thing you can do is to, ideally, use a tripod and fire off 3 or more shots at different exposures and i.e. -1, 0, +1 and then merge them in Photoshop. You can also sometimes get away with shooting the one shot in RAW, processing it in 3 or more different exposures and then merging them in Photoshop. Incidentally this is also the method used for creating HDR shots for which you would require other software.
- without using the no flash mode how can i turn off the flash? it was quite annoying taking a photo during the day and having the flash pop up all the time.
I'm guessing that you must have been using one of the scene modes? Flash will only pop up when you are using settings that mean that the image will be underexposed using the settings you've chosen. When you use one of the scene modes you are basically letting the camera decide all the settings for you. So, use either AV, TV, Program or Manual modes and adjust your ISO accordingly, if the flash pops up, increase the ISO or use a larger apperture (smaller number) or a longer shutter speed.
- im probably being stupid but how do i turn on the live view screen? ive gone into the settings and set the live mode on but it still doesn't work?
No idea, my camera doesnt have this feature
- what mode do you guys normally shoot in? are there any particular settings you use as standard?
Almost exclusively I use Aperture Priority (AV). This is because the most important aspect for me is the aperture as this controls depth of field. I can therefore set the aperture that I want to use but the camera will then work out the correct shutter speed to use with that. If I look through the viewfinder and see that the shutter speed is too low I simply increase the ISO until I get a shutter speed I like.
