Sunset

[Jonatan]

This is my first experiment with photographing sunset, and I know it is not perfect. Anyhow I had problems with exposure, I tried to have a long exposure over 4 s, to get a more soft ocean, but the picture got all white, even if I had a tripod and a shutter release. Later a boat came passing by, and I took the chance. I think the image is a little too dark, what do you think? And the sky was more orange than I captured on the photo.

What advice do you have for me, regarding long exposure? and what do you think of the photo? Thank you



Taken with canon eos 450 d, exposure 1/400 s at f11, ISO 100, 119 mm.

[windrider86]

I would personally like it better without the bright sun. For me, the boat still stands out loud and clear.
When doing a longer exposure you will need to turn down the exposure levels and make sure your iso is as low as it will go.
There are probably much better answers out there as I dont do a ton of long exposure images

[fletch]

To get a long exposure in this type of light you are going to need some very strong ND filters. Based on your settings if you wanted to use a shutter speed of 4s you need to find 11 stops of light entering the camera. You could get 2 stops of that by using f/22 but you still need to find 9 stops with filters of some kind.

I don't think the long exposure would suit the composition anyway as you would just have a big expanse of nothing in the foreground. Long exposure water shots normally work best when there is lots of spray or movement close to the camera or when you want to avoid distracting elements in the water, here you have neither and with 4s the boat would be blured as well.

The yellow colour is probably down to your white balance.

[Trader]

Hi Jonatan, I took a very similiar shot yesterday evening and I used quite different settings.

I shot that with a Nikon D300 and the following settings: Exposure: 0.011 seconds (1/90) Aperture: f/32.0 Focal Length: 70 mm ISO Speed: 200. I know I went to the extreme on the aperture setting but I wanted to have all my tree line and peer in good focus.

[Jonatan]

Thank you all so much for your respond I will try a different approach next time when I photograph sunset I just love those photos of long-exposure ocean, and will try that some time, when I have gotten a nd-filter, and under different lightning conditions. I will try to work on this photo now, I agree that the sun is too bright, and the rest of the photo is a little too dark. Thanks again

[jsl]

Hi guys,

I'm quite new to photographing sunsets and I can't seem to get the right balance either. I have a few questions which I hope you can help with...

- Exactly, what sort of filters do I need? What is "ND"?
- What lenses do you look for that give you an f stop of 32? I can only seem to get up to 22 on my lenses
- how do I make the sunset stand out more? The sunset is always more orange in real life than I can seem to take. Do you do a lot of tweaking post production or do you put on some filter/setting?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[coldphoenix]

@jsl

ND stands for Neutral Density...all it is basically is a filter you throw on the end of your lens that stops alot of light from getting to your sensor, and thus enabling you to use longer shutter speed--and might I add as well, it does so without affecting the color, hence the name "neutral" density.
That is to say, if I want a 5sec exposure on that sort of shot, even if I max out my other settings, aka stop the aperture down to f/22 or whatever its max is as well as decrease the ISO to its lowest usually 50 or 100...you're still going to be getting too much light and the shot will be overexposed. Solution is to use an ND filter which are rated in the amount of stops of light you will lose. Its good to get a couple smaller ones like 2-4 stop ND filters, because you can always stack them and the effect will be additive.
Another handy filter to look into are circular polarizers, but more in line with this conversation are the GND, or graduated neutral density filters. Which as the name suggests, is a filter with a gradient from clear to gray(neutral density) and thus allow you to expose properly for a scene with a vast lighting difference such as in the case with sky and foreground.

I'm actually not sure on your second question, though I do know I've only ever encountered the f/32 on wide angle lenses and only when they are nearer their shortest focal length.

And lastly, thats a tricky question to answer for all types of scenes you may be shooting. Afterall, its the whole art of photography to attempt to capture what it is you see. Theres no 1-2-3 solution to your problem, what I'd recommend is playing around with your white balance and HSL (hue/saturation/luminosity) settings in post process.

[Trader]

Originally Posted by jsl

- Exactly, what sort of filters do I need? What is "ND"?
- What lenses do you look for that give you an f stop of 32? I can only seem to get up to 22 on my lenses
- how do I make the sunset stand out more? The sunset is always more orange in real life than I can seem to take. Do you do a lot of tweaking post production or do you put on some filter/setting?

Thanks in advance for your help!

-You got the answer for the ND filter.
-I chose /32.0 because that is the max setting on the lens I had on at the time. I have shot sunsets with just about every lens I own (see the list in my sig) and I can't say that one is any better than another. I tend to use the telephotos more often than not because I can manipulate my composition while staying in one place. The idea is use the smallest (Largest f/ number) that you can still hand hold the shot unless you are shooting with a tripod then it doesn't matter.
-Right out of the box, a canon will give a better sunset than most nikons I have seen. I use a nikon, I prefer them. To get that shot I posted above, and that is SOOC - no post processing aside from scale the image down for the Internet. I took the exposure with a custom white balance of 7500K. Those colors are pretty much true to what I saw except at that time there appeared to be more ambient light than what was captured.

Hope that helps.

[jsl]

Thanks for your responses - I really appreciated it. I've found the advice really helpful. I'm big into forward compatability so I think that I'm going to try to start building out a set of Cokin Z-series filters/adapters. It makes sense for me to get a few different NDs for this square set of filters.

I'll try the trick with setting a high white balance. I know that it makes people in portrait shots more tanned so I'm guessing it should make a sunset more red too.