Sunset Help! =]

Hello,
I went out and took some photos of sunsets, and I seem to be having a bit of trouble. The objects below the horizon line are pretty dark, and when I try to lighten them, there is a lot of noise. If I lighten them without noise, it takes away from the sky color. Examples are #1 (dark foreground) and #2 (not noisy but pretty plain sky)..
Thanks in advance

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Either buy a GND (Graduated Neutral Density) filter or bracket your images (using a tripod) and blend them in Photoshop.

To pull off a shot like #1, you need lots of filtration.
#2 needs a little selective contrast in the sky only.

The best option is to bracket your photos with different exposures taking into account your histogram. Usually +2,0,-2 will work. However, some scenes/conditions will need additional shots on either or both ends of the spectrum. The idea to make sure that you capture all the information necessary so that you can create a photo that does not contain any overexposed or underexposed areas. However, with sunsets, the sun itself is almost always blownout to some degree, thus resulting in spikes off the right side of the histogram. Check your blinkies if your camera is equipped to see what is causing the spikes off the histogram.

Once you have obtained the bracketed photos you will need to process them using HDR (high dynamic range) software such as photomatix or process them using Photoshop. Photoshop can do HDR or you can use masks or other methods to accomplish the same task of merging the photos into one picture. This method can be very time consuming but the results can be superior to straight HDR processing depending on the result you are looking for.

You will almost always need a tripod when bracketing photos to be used for HDR or combining photos in photoshop with a few exceptions.

get a 3 stop GND filter, it will help a lot

Yes, GND's or PP with many shots. I like GND's because I dont like to PP.

I think I used about 8 stops of GND's on these shots but wanted a little more because I only had 3stop hard and the others were 3stop soft and 2 stop soft.... would have really like 3stop hard x2.... (thanks for post, I need to buy more filters before my next trip in March)

I actually just had the same problem the other day because I don't have any filters yet. If you don't have any gnds you could try what I did. What I ended up doing was exposing for the sky in one picture and then expose for the foreground in another. Then with the info from those shots, switch to M and try to expose somewhere in the middle where the sky is slightly over and foreground slightly under. This way when you pp, you're only dealing with slight changes in exposure. Took me a lot of tries, but was very happy with the results!