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Camera settings for taking perfect sunsets
Choosing the right white balance
Auto white balance is great for day to day shooting because any color deficiencies in the light are neutralised. But at sunset, it’s the huge color deficiency in the light that produces those amazing warm colors, so if you use auto white balance there’s a risk that much of that warmth will be removed and your images looking washed out.
A better option is to set the white balance to ‘Cloudy’ or ‘Shade’. By doing so, the camera will think the light’s cool so it will automatically set a lower color temperature value and the sunset will come out as vibrant as you saw it.
Which focal length is best?
The lens you use can make all the difference when shooting a sunset – do you go wide or long?
The main factor governing which lens you use is usually how you want to compose a scene. At sunset, however, another factor comes into play –the size of the suns orb.
Basically, the wider the focal length of the lens is, the smaller the sun will appear in the final image, while the longer the focal length, the bigger the sun will be.
How to avoid lens flare.
Include the sun in your pictures and there’s a high risk of flare- unless you take a few precautionary measures. If the sun is just out of frame, a lens hood, hand or piece of card can be used to shield the front of the lens and eliminate flare. Unfortunately, if you’re using it in shot, it’s not so easy. Making sure your lens’ front and rear elements and any filters used on that lens are spotlessly clean will help, but if the sun is really bright you’ll have to hide the sun behind something in the scene, such as a tree, hope that it’s intensity drops as it sinks closer to the horizon, or wait until the sun has set and shoot the afterglow instead.
Keep it steady with a tripod.
We all know tripods are a chore to cart around – but as any serious photographer will tell you, they’re essential. If you want to shoot stunning images, you need to have as much control over the picture taking process as possible., and a tripod is an invaluable ally in that respect. Not only does it slow you down, so you think more about how an image is composed, but with your camera on a sturdy tripod, camera shake isn’t an issue. This means you can use small apertures to maximizes depth of field without worrying how slow the shutter speed is, keeping your ISO setting at its minimum for optimum image quality and work in the lowest light knowing your shots are going to be at there sharpest.
QUICK TIP 1
Do's and Dont's for Sunset shots
Do get to your chosen location at least 45 minutes to an hour before sunset so you can choose the right viewpoint and have plenty of time to set up your equipment.
Don’t be afraid to use filters to enhance the sunset – warm-ups, 85 series orange and sunset grads are ideal.
Do use a strong (0.9) neutral density grad filter to tone down the sky if you want to capture detail in the foreground.
Don’t forget to adjust the white balance and use a cloudy or shady setting to enhance the colors of the sunset.
Do choose locations where there is water so the intense colors in the sky are reflected and you can shoot silhouettes.
QUICK TIP 2
Telephoto and telezoom lenses magnify the intensity of the sun’s orb so take great care when using one at sunset as you could damage your eyesight.
Lens Blur
Find out in this tutorial how to make your images pop using the lens blur filter in Adobe Photoshop CS5.
The lens blur filter adds blur to an image to give the effect of a narrower depth of field so that some objects in the image stay in focus and others areas are blurred. You can use a simple selection to determine which areas are blurred, or you can provide a separate alpha channel depth map to describe exactly how you want the blur added.
HDR Pro
High-dynamic-range photographs can be achieved by capturing multiple standard photographs, often using exposure bracketing, and then merging them into an HDR image using Adobe Photoshop CS5 HDR Pro.
Lens Correction
In this tutorial, find out how to easily correct common image problems such as chromatic aberration, vignetting, and barrel distortion using lens profiles in association with the lens correction filter in Adobe Photoshop CS5.
*Video tutorials courtesy of Adobe
