Quote:
Originally Posted by navcom
Your concerns about the dark foreground boils down to contrast. The human eye can see a much wider range of lights and darks than your camera can. Understanding this limitation is the first step in getting the best sunset/sunrise photos.
If you meter for the sun, the foreground will be dark. If you meter for the foreground, the sun will be overexposed. This is just a fact, but there are a couple of things you can do.
First, you can use a graduated neutral density filter. It's a filter that is just glass on half of it and is darker over the other half. This is kind of like putting sunglasses on only a portion of your lens...in the case of a sunrise/sunset, you would put it over the bright part where the sun is. This allows the exposure to be set slower, bringing out the detail in the foreground without blowing out the sun and sky. In effect, it decreases the intensity of the sun and sky. Also, with HDR it's easy to over-do the effect and end up with "cartoonish" and un-natural looking images. If you use this, be subtle to keep it natural looking.
A second way is to use HDR techniques. This involves taking several pictures at different exposures and blending them together using Photoshop or other post-processing program. You would take one with the sun exposed properly, take one with the foreground exposed properly, and a third somewhere inbetween (or several inbetween). To do this, you need a tripod and the camera cannot move between shots or you will ruin the end results.
A third option is to do nothing. Quite honestly, a dark foreground, when composed in the proper place in an image, can add dramatic effect and emphasize the colors of the sky and sun. In the case of your pictures, I think you've done nicely. But Fletch is right...a couple of them are a bit crooked as far as the horizon is concerned. Exposure-wise, not bad!
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Thnk you for such detailed answer.
Yes I can see now that pics 2 and 3 are not straight at the horizon.
I am more concerned on picture 1
So do you mean that altough the foregroung is dark the picture is ok?
My problem was that when I was trying to shoot in manual mode and look at my meter
reading at 0 I was getting an overexposed shot.