Moore's Law & Digital Photography
Saturday, October 30, 2010 at 5:47PM 
This is an older article that I found going through my bookmarks (2006). In the article the author gives one of the most succinct explantions of why the sky is overexposed when the foreground is correct, or the sky is correct and the foreground becomes a silhoutte that I have ever read.
A key factor in quality is the ratio in brightness from the darkest to the lightest. The reason many pictures don't turn out is that in daytime the human eye can easily perceive a dynamic range of 10,000:1, while at night it is more like 1,000,000:1. Meanwhile, color slide film can record only about 32:1, and digital cameras, about 64:1.
In many situations, this forces a choice - do you expose for the light parts of the scene and let the dark parts go dead black, or save the shadows and turn the bright parts pure white? Future digital sensors will fix this, with ever broader dynamic range and greater light sensitivity (the ISO rating). At the same time, the digital noise that comes with high ISO today will diminish. - Nathan Myhrvold, NYTimes
The whole article is worth a read... some of his predictions are coming true already.
Photo Credit: Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820–1884), The Great Wave, Albumen silver print from glass negative, 1857, 13 1/4 x 16 5/16 in. Le Gray is known for his combination printing of landscapes. He would expose one plate for the landscape and another for the sky. Thus solving the problem referred to in the article.
Digital Photography, Exposure in Photography
Reader Comments (1)
Found your post interesting to read. I cant wait to see your post soon. Good Luck for the upcoming update. :) Thanks for sharing!