This is just an idea so bear with me. Have you ever got those images where the sky is way to bright and the land is correctly exposed or the land is underexposed and the sky is nice and blue...of course you have;-)

The solution is a graduated Neutral Density filter which is a filter that is graduated from various levels of gray down to clear. By splitting your image and placing the gray to the sky you reduce the brightness and get less brightness difference between land and sky.

The idea here is to create that filter at home by using a clear packaging label and apply a gradient to it via your printer. Get yourself a cheap UV filter and cutout the label and stick it to the lens and voila.

If someone has done this with success let us know;-)