Smoky said:
Besudes going back when the weather improves, what suggestions do you have for doing a better job either on the front end (camera settings, filters, etc) or the rear end, computer software?
Waiting for a better day "would" be my first advice as well -- for a number of reasons. Smoky, I'm not sure if the FZ30 has a spot metering option. I use a hand held 1 degree meter - and have had it in my bag for probably 20 years now. The reason I ask is that in addition to a lack of color, the picture has no depth.
The reason it doesn't is that the number of f-stops between darkest point in the image and the lightest is probably not more than 1-2. That's one reason it is suggested pictures not be taken in the hours just before and after noon. The higher the sum, the fewer shadows to show depth. We "never" shoot a portrait with a flash looking straight at the person -- but rather place it so the nose casts shadowing to give the face depth. When doing scenery, the first order of business for me is to measure the light w/the spot meter across the scene to make sure there at least 4 stops difference. If not, no matter what the subject, it will be a flat image so I won't even bother to shoot it.
OTOH, if there are too many stops difference - and they exceed the range of your settings, one end or the other will lose "texture" -- for example, bright sun next to dark shadows. In a shot such as the image you are exploring, you have a number of horizontal lines to work with. So if the sky is much brighter than, say, the Mountain or the water, a Graduated Neutral Density (GND) filter would be ideal. It would filter the sky only, thereby cutting brightness by however many stops of neutral density that filter yields, but leave the water and mountains as is. So it's nice to have several such filters -- according to the number of stops between the bright spot and the darkest.
And the picture is dull because there is not much "daylight" light. Objects do not have color, they have the ability to reflect, or absorb light. Light has color. Daylight light has all the colors. As the sun rises or sets, the number of colors in the spectrum decreases -- so various effects can be had at different times of the day. A shot like you have there would best shot either early in the day or later in the day. If shot a noon, it will look about as bad as what? you have now.
Hope I haven't over answered you question . . .?