Shooting the Sun

ghinson

Any hints or suggestions for capturing the sun. I live in an oasis of sunrise and sunset photos. And have taken tons of cliched sunsets.



These days, I turn more to sunrises and take pics like the one below, trying to capture the painting-like pre-dawn colors.



But this morning, the sun was spectacular as it was coming over the horizon and, fortuitously, a sailboat crossed right in front of it, giving me the perfect composition. And the captures stunk. Focused in to my lens' max of 200mm (D90 cropped sensor), the sun was over-exposed and halo'ed. And the rest of the sky, which was colored as above to my eye, looked like the most horrific shade of rusty-grey.

Give me some suggestions for better capturing the sun, itself, in a photo that doesn't wash out or under-expose the rest of your composition.

Thanks!

Greg

kdog

So you want to get a picture of the sun in the background (low in the sky of course), and another object in the foreground, and you want both of those object exposed correctly? Well there's only one way to do that. Take two exposures (or more) and blend them in Photoshop. One exposure is shot to properly expose the sun, and the other for the foreground object. Your camera can easily meter the background because it's big. A small object in the foreground might be more difficult for the camera to meter, even using a small metering circle. In that case, you just have to use your experience to determine how much to bump up the exposure. Most good SLRs have an autobracketing feature that makes it quick and easy to fire off multiple bracket shots like this. A tripod helps, but isn't essential if your camera supports burst bracketing and you have a steady hand.

Actually, there is another way if you're close enough to the foreground object. Use a flash.

Cheers,
-joel

ghinson

I could try blending exposures. Or some HDR option. But I'm talking about just exposing for large background sky, and sun itself. Not even worried about something in the foreground. If the sun itself is sharp, the sky is dark, blood red.

kdog

ghinson wrote:

I could try blending exposures. Or some HDR option. But I'm talking about just exposing for large background sky, and sun itself. Not even worried about something in the foreground. If the sun itself is sharp, the sky is dark, blood red.

Ok, your example mentioned a fortuitous boat passing through the scene, so I thought that's what you wanted.

Either way, my previous answer still holds. A dramatic sky like that has a huge dynamic range that exceeds what your camera can capture. A camera captures maybe 8 stops of dynamic range. But your eye can see something like 15 stops. So blending multiple exposures is really the only way to capture what the eye truly sees. But personally, I'd be happy with your first shot. The sun isn't too blown out, and you got deep colors on the rest of the sky. Seems ok to me.

EDIT: BTW, I'm not sure whether the pictures you posted were supposed to illustrate a problem or not. If not, maybe it would help for you to post an example or two of a problem shot and the EXIF data so that we can get a better idea of what you're trying to accomplish and suggest ways to make it better.

Regards,
-joel

thapamd

What Joel said Still love the colors you captured in the sky!