canon eos kiss x 3 good sunset settings?

[Kobrono2]

I just got my canon eos kiss x 3 (Digital Rebel T1i) recently and cant quite seem to find a good combination of settings to capture the neon oranges and pinks in the sunsets here around Fukuoka (Japan, not that it matters).

If anyone has some suggestions as to a good possible white balance, exposure comp./AEB setting, ISO, aperture, and shutter speed settings are, it would be much appreciated .

Thanks

[sybren]

Could you post some photos of your results so far, along with the EXIF info? I'm sure that we can then talk you into the right direction, and perhaps even give an explanation of why ;-)

[fletch]

Two things will affect the colour your camera captures. The exposure and the white balance setting.

Exposure is very tricky at sunset becuase the light is rapidly changing and the sky is often a lot brighter than it appears leading to washed out skys and dark feature less shadows. If the sky is over exposed this can cause it to lose saturation and look dull and colourless. Due to the complexity of sunset light there are no magic bullet settings or camera modes. Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) will help though as you can capture 3 different exposures at once to ensure you get the shot.

White Balance will affect the colour of an image, too cool an it will look blue, to warm and it will go orange. Try the daylight setting and if that doesn't work you will need to set a custom white balance.

Shooting RAW can help in these tricky situations as you have more oppertunity to adjust later and you don't need to worry about your WB setting in the field.

[navcom]

Sunsets fall into the "high dynamic range" limitation category. Dynamic range is the range between the darkest and brightest spots in your scene. The human eye can distinguish roughly 20 stops of light while your camera can only see about 9 or so. This is why when you expose for the sky, the foreground goes black, and if you expose for the foreground, the sky washes out.

Your camera cannot reproduce the entire dynamic range that is present in a sunset scene as the range from the darkest to brightest spots is huge. To compensate, you need to use either a graduated neutral density filter or use HDR software techniques as fletch describes to "push back" the brightness of the sun so you get a more balanced dynamic range. This will also help tremendously with your color issues.

Once you get a more balanced dynamic range, the next step is to get a proper exposure. For most camera's, auto exposure will slightly overexpose the sky leaving it washed out. You need to over-ride the auto settings by either lowering your exposure compensation or use manual or aperture priority mode and then purposely set it to underexpose a bit. With a digital camera, it's easy to experiment during the sunset to find the right settings if you are not familiar with what to do.

Also, as fletch describes, white balance is another huge factor in getting proper sky colors. Personally I would not recommend using the daylight setting but use the shade setting instead. It produces a warmer tone and brings out those pinks and oranges present in a sunset. Or you can custom set it if you like. It will come down to personal preference. I shoot in RAW and set my white balance to shade...but since the image is in RAW format, I can easily change the white balance in post-processing if I find something that works better for a particular scene.

Hope that helps!

[OsmosisStudios]

Assuming you're shooting in sRGB:


Depending on what shade of pink you're looking for, you may not get it. Orange is particularly hard to get proper, depending on the shade. It's a limitation of the RGB colour system, not the camera.

[Kobrono2]

Thanks for the tips everybody, I'll try to get some pics up soon

Much appreciated!!