Photographing sunsets

KStaford

Hi,
I am new to taking pictures and dont even have much kit yet. I adore sunsets and those lazy atmospheric skies that you often get around the west of Ireland.

Can anyone tell me what the secret is to capturing sunset skies? How do you get the scope? atmosphere ? romance and feel that is there to the naked eye ?

JMcL

A few suggestions:

Wait until the sun is very low in the sky or even just gone down. If you're shooting in the direction of the sunset, and the sun's in the frame, you'll get burnt out highlights on and around the sun (particularly ugly on digital), or underexpose everything else.

You don't say whether you've got a DSLR or a compact point and shoot. I'll go on the basis it's a DSLR, as the following techniques are more difficult to use on a p&s, if possible at all

The big problem with shooting sunsets is there's very strong contrast between the foreground, and the sky (ie the sky is much, much brighter), and by just taking a single photo you'll either have a properly exposed sky, and black foreground, or properly exposed foreground and white sky. There are 2 ways around this:

1. Use a neutral density graduated filter (ND grad). This is the traditional method used by film photographers to balance exposures but still works well on digital. The filter is a rectangular piece of glass or resin which is clear at one end, and opaque to varying degrees at the other. You slide it up and down in a holder fixed to the lens to place the dark part of the filter over the bright part of the image, and the clear bit over the dark bit. Cokin make a cheap system, or going the higher end route Lee filters are favoured by pros
2. Take 2 or more shots with varying shutter speeds and combine them later on the computer. There're loads of tutorials around on this technique (here's one I posted some time back). When taking the photos aim to have about a 3 stop difference between your sky and foreground (to increase the exposure by 1 stop, you double the shutter speed, by 2 double it, by 3 x4 etc)

It all sounds a bit complicated, but it's not too bad in practice, and the results are worth it

Balfey1972

Thanks for the tips John. much appreciated.