Shooting Into the Sun

[augiecrazy8]

I got up early on Saturday morning in hopes of catching a beautiful sunset over Lake Michigan. The sunset was underwhelming, but I wanted to try a few things. I cranked my shutter speed way up and tried to freeze some water that was splashing over the sea wall (and subsequently really freezing because it was 10 degrees). Anyway, I ended up shooting directly into the sun without any kind of on camera filter. I then took the opportunity to play around with the Lightroom graduated filter tool. This is what I came up with.





The histograms don't look too bad on these, but I have a two questions. First, are these pictures harsh to your eyes? The sun is pretty heavy, and I played around with several on camera settings to catch a better exposure. Second, what have you found to be the best way to shoot into the sun and catch reflections on the water, etc.? Do I have to purchase an graduating ND or polarizing filter?

Thanks

Exposure 1/4000 sec
Aperture f/3.2
Focal Length 28 mm
ISO Speed 100
Exposure Bias 0 EV

[Verodar]

Nice shots... like the 1st photo, it has more details

[SusanH1970]

I like the first one. I prefer the warmer tones, and also the larger wave gives more of a diagonal leading line.

[looking4OPH]

Being a Chicagoan, I'm still scratchin' my head as to why you would get up early to get a sunset.....especially from this side of the lake.

That said, I like the shots. The ice in the foreground almost looks like sand. The sun is a bit harsh, but not really that much.

[augiecrazy8]

Smartarse, haha. Sunrise, there we go. I'm trying to determine if a graduated filter directly on the camera is the only/best way to deaden the harshness of the sun. In these images I exposed for the water and then tried to add the GF in Lightroom. I have two images because I tried two different levels of filter (although I do want to say that I sort of like the harshness of the sun, it's exactly what the actual location looked like).

Does anyone have any experience with a graduated filter on the camera? Or any ideas how to possibly bring the sun down a bit?

[jml79]

I have not used a GF or ND filter but a polarizer may help with lens flare and will change the colours some. The sun looks completely blown so playing with RAW will not likely help here. You could shoot a couple of exposures quickly using bracketing and a Tripod and then manually combine them in PP. I would have tried a 0.7 ev bracket manually EV compensated so that the brightest exposure was correct for the foreground and the next 2 are progressively darker. You might then be able to play around in RAW until you get the 2 great exposures and then mask them into one image.

I mention the .7 ev bracket only because that is what my camera will do. If yours will bracket larger then do it. I think this would be more flexible because a GF would affect the splash in the foreground where processing an image of the sky and one of the foreground will allow you to mask out the waterdrops that extend up into what would be your darker portion so that they stay the same exposure as the rest of the foreground. Does this make sense?

BTW, I like the first image. Bigger splash and warmer colours. I think they are both great pictures.