Sunsets/Sunrises

[Jim Powell]

I’m working at taking better photographs. My current focus is sunsets and sunrises. I have a Canon Powershot S3. Tonight I took a couple of pictures, one in Landscape mode and one in night mode. Both at a F2.7 @ 1 second. The night mode came out much sharper. The ISO was set to automatic but I could not tell what ISO setting was chosen. If you were setting the ISO for a sunset/sunrise shot what setting would be preferred and why? This was not a spectacular sunset. I was just practicing and maybe I waited too late but at this point the vivid color is my main issue.

I’ve tried taking a series of photos in Program mode and reducing the exposure in each picture taken but it doesn’t bring out the colors more—just darkens the picture. Will using a gray card to set the white balance help to bring out the colors? Or make a custom white balance file for sunsets/ sunrises? What are your best tricks?

[kevindar]

does s3 shoot raw?
does is shoot manual mode?
in landscape photography, if you are really interested, you need to shoot with a tripod and at the lowest iso your camera supports. your image is underexposed, and there is too much dark area in it. also during sunset and sunrise you may be looking at extremes of dynamic range, meaning your sky will be very bright, and the earth very dark. a circular polarizer can sometimes help remedy that if you are shooting at 90 degrees from where the sun is setting. otherwise you may need to take a couple of exposures and then blend them, or the minimum do some postprocessing to lighten the ground or darken the sky, or both.
good luck.

[rammy]

Low ISO (100) and longer exposure. I would have exposed for about 5 seconds to start with.

I am guessing that this shot does not look like it did to you as you stood there. I don't mean the colour or lack of, i mean it was probably brighter?

[agunther]

You can teach the S3 to shoot RAW (http://www.aguntherphotography.com/reviews/canon-s3-is.html).
I think all you really need is a tripod. Set the camera to low ISO and use Manual Exposure or even Exposure bracketing.
The noise level of this camera is relatively high, even at ISO-80. At auto ISO it will use the highest value (unless you use Hi, I believe that 400 in Auto mode).
Try exposure bracketing and stack the resulting image. When you get into RAW editing, you don't really have to worry about white balance during the shot, you can tune that later on your computer.

[Jim Powell]

First, thank you all for your feedback. I am using a tripod with a delay shutter release. The ISO is set to auto, F 2.7 and a 1 second exposure.

As practice with the camera I am referring to the Canon XSI and D50 manuals also in an effort to familiarize myself with SLR cameras. Later on this year I want to upgrade to a SLR camera. I’m not going to buy lense filters till that time.

With the D50 or the Xsi will the ISO setting appear in the pictures exif properties even though the camera has been set to “Auto”. With my Si3 it just tells me that the picture was taken as “Auto” and I have no idea what the setting actually was.

I was looking at a landscape photo that was taken with 3 different exposures at different times of the day and then combined. It had been done with film. Done in digital I’m guessing that this is accomplished more easily. Can this function be performed in Photoshop Elements 7 or is the full version required? What specifically is it called? Aguther is this what you mean by stacking? What editing program are you using?