On the opposite end of the spectrum of Bad Light is the solid overcast. Color needs light to pop in our images. While our mind’s eye (combination of our vision and brain) make it possible for us to see color in any light, the camera, not so much. The color is there, in fact in overcast light the color can be really saturated and more vibrant than normal if you know your craft and recognize the light source for what it is and shoot accordingly. I put up these examples to illustrate my points.
The first thing to take advantage of the saturated color in this bad light is your White Balance. You might think since there are clouds, switch to Cloudy which is an option (that’s 6000k). I went to the Sunny or more importantly, 5500k for my White Balance. Why? Using Auto White Balance (AWB) will get you in a situation like this, about 4200-4600k which to the untrained eye, an ok looking photo, color wise. But we don’t want just ok, we want the color saturation the light is providing. Simply going up to 5500k will bring out that color. I like simple. Next, exposure. You might want to not underexpose but be at Zero comp or with the D4s, at +1/3. It all depends on the deepness of the overcast and as you can see here, we had true English deep overcast (all these photo taken during our England Aviation Class at Duxford in April).
One final thing I like to do, and this is a little harder to previsualize and that’s the placement of the color. Color Contrast is something I use in my photography ALL the time. In this case, I looked at the “shades” of gray in the background and shot when the aircraft were not in front of a solid shade of gray. Shooting with the D4s / 80-400VR3 and shooting with both eyes open, seeing what is coming for a background something I do in my shooting to maximize my results. The key here is to understand the nature of the light and make it work for your photography. You’d be surprised how there is in bad light color too!