Need some advice

[BigMcLargeHuge]

I'm looking for some friendly advice. I've only had my camera a year so I'm still learning. I took some pictures the yesterday and they all came out looking dull. It was a cloudy overcast day so I set my Sony A350's mode dial for cloudy but all the pictures came out looking like this. What did I do wrong? Or was it just a bad day to take pictures? Here are some of the settings: f-stop = f/10, exposure time = 1/80 sec., ISO speed = ISO-100, Exposure bias = 0 step, Max Aperture = 4.97, Meetering mode = pattern, Flash = none.

 

[Ryan L]

I am not sure what metering "pattern" is, but like you said it was dull cloudy day and you took a scenery shot. The sky is a little overexposed as you are losing some details. I don't think a CP would have helped much on this day (for the sky anyway, the water maybe). Did you have at least a UV/Haze filter on? You could increase the saturation a little and make the trees come out. But unless there was a beautiful sunset with pink and orange skies I don't know how much better it would have been.

 

[BigMcLargeHuge]

I actually don't have filters yet. I still need a lot of the accessories. Here is the same picture that I messed with a little with the editing software that came with the camera. I always take a jpg and a RAW for just this reason. This one looks a little better to me but not great. But it just seemed like when I was there looking at the scene it looked a lot nicer. The water was a nice blue-green and all the plants were vibrant green.

 

[Dallmeyer]

Are you using the 18-70 Sony kit lens? Research the legacy Minolta A-mount lenses which fit your camera. Some of them are excellent! http://www.dyxum.com/

 

[BigMcLargeHuge]

Ok thanks for the link, I'll give it a try. I also have photo impact pro but don't know how to use it very well. Yeah the lens I used for this picture was the stock sony 18-70. When I bought the camera I got the setup that came with that one and the sony 55-200. I do want to get other lenses to try.

 

[Vinny]

Since you're shooting digital a UV filter is not going to improve anything since the sensor is capable of handling UV. Have you had a problem like this before? I guess as was mentioned it could be the lens.