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Taking photos of fog is one of those situations where the light meter in your camera is always tricked and needs a bit of help.
Fog is like a big white blanket, and when the camera light meter evaluates a foggy scene and sees a big blanket of white, it thinks the scene is overexposed and adjusts accordingly. The camera doesn’t know that there is meant to be a big blanket of white and the result is the exposure will be dark and the fog will be grey and dirty rather than white and beautiful.
Here is a comparison of photos I took with the left being the SOOC (Straight out of camera) at the cameras metered exposure. The right is adding +1 exposure compensation to force the camera to overexpose what it thinks it needs by one stop.
Even in this example I could probably have pushed the exposure compensation up a bit more but you can still see the difference. What the camera decided was the correct exposure is very grey and dull. Adding exposure compensation in this situation helps keep the fog more white and clean looking.
So, the tip here is: When shooting a foggy scene, add exposure compensation to keep the fog correctly exposed.
Hope that you find that tip helpful next time you get the chance to shoot some fog.
