Sunset Exposure Help

[puggle]

From my office on the 18th floor, I have a panoramic view looking west and we occasionally get great sunsets.

Can anyone please help me with some tips on how to shoot this?

I'm using a Canon 5D with a 16-35 wide angle zoom. I tried metering to the right of the sunset, pressed the shutter down halfway to lock the metering, than re-composed the shot back towards the sun. The sunset did not come out, and looked blown out, and the landscape in foreground was too dark. Is this wrong? Is there a better way to lock exposure?

I really want to master this, and I know it should not be too tough. Please help!

[eddarr]

I'm not positive about the 5d but there should be a custom function that locks both focus and exposure when you press the shutter half way.

However the best way to lock the exposure is to shoot in manual.

[chestercopperpot]

it sounds to me like you are describing two things:
1) sounds like your exposure is off to begin with. I agree with Eric, your best bet is to shoot manual.

2) you are also describing an inherent problem with landscape photography - especially those involving the sun. Scenes such as you describe surpass the ability of the sensor to capture the full dynamic range. Ultimately, you have to make a trade off somewhere, in getting the sky correct, youll underexpose the foreground or vice versa. You can use graduated neutral density filters to help with this problem, or of course attempt to fix in PP.

So, ultimately, sounds like you have a bit of both going on.

[blackcap]

From my office on the 18th floor, I have a panoramic view looking west and we occasionally get great sunsets.

Can anyone please help me with some tips on how to shoot this?

I'm using a Canon 5D with a 16-35 wide angle zoom. I tried metering to the right of the sunset, pressed the shutter down halfway to lock the metering, than re-composed the shot back towards the sun. The sunset did not come out, and looked blown out, and the landscape in foreground was too dark. Is this wrong? Is there a better way to lock exposure?

You can't capture the entire dynamic range in one shot. You basically have the following choices:

1) Expose for the sky and have the foreground dark (yuck)

2) Use a 3 or 4 stop graduated ND filter to darken the sky while you take the shot, this will balance the exposure so that both the sky and foreground are exposed correctly. A tripod may be necessary if your shutter speed drops too low.

3) Use a tripod and exposure bracketing so that you have multiple exposures of the same shot. Then either use HDR software such as Photomatix or manually blend the shots together using digital blending.

My preference is for the grad filters as it gets the image pretty close out of the camera. Doesn't work well when the horizon is uneven (e.g. mountains, hills, trees) and you don't want the overlapping area silhouetted though.

Check out the Singh Ray blog for more info on GND filters: http://singhray.blogspot.com/2008/08/graphic-lesson-on-using-graduated-nd.html

[jcothron]

I shoot a 5D and a lot of landscapes, waterfalls, sunrises and sunsets.

One of the first things I experienced in moving from film (Velvia) to digital was the ease at which the sun will get blown out. Exposing to the right of the "bright spot" just doesn't cut it anymore. I find myself underexposing by 1 or 1.5 stops when metering at that spot to get the kind of results I personally prefer.

The foreground being dark is just dynamic range. That may or not be okay depending on what you're trying to accomplish. As someone mentione above you can use graduated filters to help even out the range in the shot but that has potential drawbacks as well. In my particular case I shoot a 24mm a lot. On wide angle lenses many filters (even the slim ones) will show up at the corners of the frame in your shot...especially if you happen to stack a couple. Of course you can crop that out, but you may be cutting some of the image you want to keep.

The other route, if you want a lighter foreground is also as mentioned above, go the multiple exposure/HDR route.