Sunrise on the Bay

craig_d · June 10, 2010

I went out early in the morning one day last week to shoot the sunrise by the edge of the San Francisco Bay just south of the San Mateo Bridge. I was equipped with my latest toys, a 30-year-old Nikon FE and a bag of manual-focus Nikkor lenses, fueled up with a roll of Velvia 50. These images were shot over a period of ten minutes or so, and the sunrise was incredible, aided by highly cooperative cloud layers.

Since film cameras don't record EXIF data and I wasn't taking notes, all I can really be sure of (from memory) is which lenses were used (50mm f/1.4 AI, 28mm f/2 AI, and 20mm f/4 AI), though I'm pretty sure all of these were shot at f/5.6 or f/8.

I haven't done any digital PP on these other than horizon leveling and cropping. The horizon may not seem perfectly level, but that's mostly due to the inconsistent thickness of the fog bank in the distance, plus the barrel distortion that is part of the charm (or at least character) of these old manual-focus wide-angle lenses, and the shadow of the bridge making the left-hand part of the horizon seem lower than it really is.

Comments welcome.

1) 50mm

2) 28mm

3) 28mm

4) 20mm

5) 20mm