Sunset,Sunrise + clouds etc in general

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Permalink Reply by Edgar Alegre on September 7, 2009 at 7:43am

I use a Circular Polarizing filter to increase the saturation of the blues in the sky and clouds are more visible against that blue sky. A wide-angle lens works better especially if you're shooting a scenery with a mountain in the background and flowers or rocks in the foreground.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff on September 7, 2009 at 8:16am

Shooting with a fixed lens Camera I wouldn't know about lenses. I would however recommend that you use a polarizing filter and always shoot from just after the sun disappears behind the horizon. I have gotten some beautiful shots that way. Sunset is the same way from about 30 minutes before until the fully breaks the horizon. Hope this helps

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Permalink Reply by Hugh Gilmore on September 8, 2009 at 6:21am

thanks very much

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Permalink Reply by Hugh Gilmore on September 8, 2009 at 6:21am

thanks very much

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Permalink Reply by Niels Henriksen on September 8, 2009 at 11:11am

A polarizer is one piece of kit that should always be in your camera bag. While somewhat expensive it is well worth the cost to recue glare.

The polarizer work best at 90 degrees to the sun and becomes ineffective at 0 and 180 degrees.

When shooting wide angle skies then a polarizer will cause tonal gradations across the scene as the above angles are taken into account Full effect to no effect)

The best sky colours happen just before sunrise and just after sunset and with the lower light a tripod (longer exposure times) is recommended, unless you are after the colours on the bottom of clouds just at sunset.

The blue channel has the most noise so when shooting clouds make sure your histogram go to the right edge.

If shooting jpegs then I would recommend bracketing your shots (+- 0.7 to 1.0 range) as RAW files allow for more recovery and exposure control.

Niels

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Permalink Reply by Mario Dennis on September 8, 2009 at 12:30pm

I concur about using a polarizer; however with dramatic, cloudy skies the impact may be minimal. If I want to emphasize a cloudy sky (such as during or after a thunderstorm) I may use a layer enhancement technique and play with the brightness and contrast.

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Permalink Reply by Kirk Howard on September 9, 2009 at 10:01pm

I have used a polarizer as well, and I would recommend that you add it to your bag of tricks. However, if you find yourself underexposing foreground or overexposing the back ground, you may want to consider a 3-stop split ND filter.

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Permalink Reply by Damien Franco on September 19, 2009 at 7:03am

Bump

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Permalink Reply by Anthony Walsh on October 22, 2009 at 5:23pm

I tend to use a 10-20mm wide angle always tripod mounted camera so I can keep the ISO low and aperture small. polarizing filter is a good tool but I tens to use ND graduated fikters more, the grads are great for balancing exposure.

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