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Sunsets: What's the trick?

MikeInRochesterMikeInRochester Registered Users Posts: 11 Big grins
edited October 21, 2008 in Technique
I love sunsets, but so far have been having a hard time capturing them to my satisfaction.

Short of any sort of post processing (I'm not at that stage yet), can anyone lend some tips or tricks to getting the best results onto my SD card?

Much appreciated (by the newest DGrinner)!

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    TangoTango Registered Users Posts: 4,592 Major grins
    edited October 13, 2008
    show us some examples of what you have so far.

    here is a thread with alot of info...except it looks like the thread originator took away the examples...
    http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=99241
    Aaron Nelson
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    davidweaverdavidweaver Registered Users Posts: 681 Major grins
    edited October 14, 2008
    I wrote about sunsets somewhere else on Dgrin a while back. basically there are some things in nature that you cannot capture due to the technical limitations of the equipment and the shear awesomeness that nature provides us. Another example are flowers with colors that we are incapable of capturing and reproducing.

    A suggestion for sunsets is to use the them for lighting and backdrops to other subject matter. Learning how to fill/balance a flash into the sunset is a good technique to understand.

    Cheers!
    David
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    colourboxcolourbox Registered Users Posts: 2,095 Major grins
    edited October 14, 2008
    One thing I didn't see in the thread was white balance. If you go Auto white balance you'll kill all the colors as the camera tries to neutralize them to gray. Try setting it to Daylight, or shoot raw and deal with it there.
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    TangoTango Registered Users Posts: 4,592 Major grins
    edited October 14, 2008
    colourbox wrote:
    One thing I didn't see in the thread was white balance. If you go Auto white balance you'll kill all the colors as the camera tries to neutralize them to gray. Try setting it to Daylight, or shoot raw and deal with it there.

    good point
    Aaron Nelson
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    MikeInRochesterMikeInRochester Registered Users Posts: 11 Big grins
    edited October 15, 2008
    Thanks for the tips. I'll dig out a "better" pic and post that.

    I went out to try tonight, but nature didn't cooperate. I tried to shoot some fall colors and played around with white balance. Interesting results, to say the least.

    As for shooting in RAW, I haven't tried that yet. That's somewhere in my future.
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    davespicsdavespics Registered Users Posts: 93 Big grins
    edited October 20, 2008
    Hi Mike,

    Sunsets can come in so many flavors. For example, a sunset on a beach is different than a sun setting in a mountainous region. I also think it takes some luck. The only sunset picture on my website came after I stepped out of a dinner while on vacation so I had my camera and (more importantly) tripod in my trunk.

    I am an average photographer but out of nowhere this sunset and sky was there for me....am I good or am I lucky?

    289556255_k8d2W-L-3.jpg
    My Site - www.davespics.com
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    ifocusifocus Registered Users Posts: 161 Major grins
    edited October 20, 2008
    Some tricks
    I do not pretend to know it all but I can share some of my tricks; in a nutshell, this is what I do.

    1. Shoot RAW, it gives more flexibility especially adjusting white balance and recovering highlights

    2. Use a tripod at low ISO (100) to minimize noise.

    3. Shoot in Manual mode as you can nail the exposure. The camera is usually not in its operating range with this kind of light.

    4. It is nice when the sun is barely there, even better if you do not see it. The camera capture colors of the after glow long after the sunset. It is the best when every body think it is over!!!

    5. We usually face the sun, well look behind as the scene could be awesome as well.

    I hope this helps.

    JY


    395957441_cYUTJ-L.jpg
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    divamumdivamum Registered Users Posts: 9,021 Major grins
    edited October 21, 2008
    The "Dusk or Dawn" challenge entries thread might be of interest for you to peruse - loads of sunsets and sunrises in there to see.

    Speaking as a n00b who attempted that challenge, the main thing I discovered was how metering off different regions of the sky gave me such HUGELY different results (strangely, I found this more noticeable when I was using my P&S which only has an LCD screen and no viewfinder, so it was all "live view" essentially). But as I was trying to shoot it, I realised that I could select different points of the light and colours to shift how the camera interpreted the light. Was a real lesson in how to use the available light, in fact.

    In general, I found that if I metered off the BRIGHTEST part of the sky, I got the best colours.... but then also lost details into silhouettes. It was a tradeoff, and eventually I got lucky and hit the right combination that I liked :)

    I will say that I took an embarassing number of shots to get maybe 3 that I liked, so it was a great deal of trial and error. However... I did learn a TON about the options available to me as I try to expose for interesting light, and from now on am consciously metereing from various points of a scene no matter WHAT the light.

    Btw, if you're not comfortable multiple metering, perhaps use the auto-exposure-bracketing feature of your camera? You'll get 3 options from each shot that way, and perhaps will capture the colours your eye is remembering and wants to see :)
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