PBase

I was wondering what settings would be used on a shot with direct sun, shadows and shade? I hate post processing so I want it as aright as possible the first time.

I shot this with a mixture of the three and had to correct it in PS (a Major Pain the rear).

http://www.pbase.com/tolts/image/120913511

Any help would be great.

Maybe it would help us to see the unprocessed image for comparison. My first reaction is to use fill flash.

To me these pages from an online school of photography have been helpfull think there was somthing about flash photography in difficult circumstances:
http://www.ttf.dk/English/Photography/S ... Flash.aspx

For all photographic media, film or digital, there is a limit to how many steps from dark to light the media will record. Five or six stops is probably the norm. If you were to use Flash from the same vantage point, it would probably help the shadow area but might possibly blow out the highlights. Three approaches to this situation come to mind. Take the shot that you have, select the shadows you wish to lighten, using photo editing software, and then use one of the adjustment tools available such as levels. Another approach would be to expose for the shadows and selectively darken the Highlights. The problem with this is that you will probably blow out the bright areas and corrections will not appear natural. Visually we accept loss of detail more readily in the shadow areas.
Another practical solution to this problem is to take more than one exposure, exposing say one shot for the shadows, one for the mid-tones, and one for the highlights, and then combine them with the Photo Exposure Merge function available in either Photo Shop or Elements 8. A simple solution that has worked for me on a number of occasions is to shoot one exposure in RAW and then do two conversions to jpg,
where one has the exposure adjusted for the highlights, the other for the shadows. I then combine the two jpgs and mask off the unwanted area. Hate it or love it, it is hard to pursue digital photography with out some post processing. Hope this has helped some - Best wishes, Bob Waggoner

Thanks for the advice. I'll see what results it will get me.

If you have a spot meter on your camera meter an area of the scene that is as close to grey as you can estimate (your hand is one place that is close to neutral/18 percent middle grey) and then adjust your exposure based on how you want the photo to look. Darker shadows? Underexpose. Brighter whites? Overexpose. Of course, with a digital sensor, some of the problems of "noise" are introduced with underexposing a file, hence the "expose to the right" axiom.

I looked at your photo and it seems your camera's meter was reading the VERY bright scene and underexposing. Your photo can be easily fixed in PS by using ACR exposure adjustments when you open the RAW file prior to importing it into PS for further editing. If you photographed it in jpg format, I have no idea what to do except convert it to TIFF and then use some curves to get the "greyness" out of it.

here's a link that might prove helpful
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutori ... tering.htm

We hold some workshops on this. Check this one out:
http://www.pbase.com/ajaysood/workshops