How do you photograph a sunset w/ ppl

I'm going to be heading down to the beach this weekend to practice some shots w/my husband and daughter together. I would love to catch the sunset w/them in shilouette and one where they are also visable. I obviously cant trust my in camera meter so exactly how would i go about acheiving it?

If you're taking shots of sunsets without foreground subjects, or with foreground subjects that you want to be silhouetted, I don't think there's any such thing as a "correct" exposure. I find that metering off the sky usually gives quite pleasant results: because the photo is essentially underexposed, the sunset colours are very saturated and vibrant.

With subjects in the foreground, I'd use some fill-in flash. Meter off the sky to get the background (i.e. the sunset) exposed OK, and the flash will illuminate the foreground subjects. Remember your flash won't sync properly at anything faster than about 1/200, so the lens will need to be stopped down appropriately to slow down the shutter speed. Make sure your subjects are within range of the flash. Check the exposure on the LCD after you've taken a shot and adjust if ncesssary. And I'd suggest bracketing the exposures too - it doesn't cost anything with digital and increases the chance of getting a good shot.

Have fun.

Meter for the sky in P mode, transfer settings to M mode, turn on flash on ETTL and set FEC to about 0. If you're there a while and the sky gets darked watch the histogram and adjust shutter speed/aperture so the background's not underexposed.

For silhuetes just meter on sky, and underexpose a bit, to get better colors. This one is easy. Harder is to get nice background AND properly lit people. Only way to do this is to use flash. As before meter on sky, and use FEL for flash, metering from people's face. This way you can actually get pretty decent photo, but it will be hard to get really great one. It's just waaaay too much difference between sun and rest of stuff you want to capture, to have everything perfectly lit.

if you meter off the sky, the people will be dark.
If you fuse a fill in flash in Av mode. Better yet, meter off the sky and use the flash in the Mmode to illuminate the people.
Look at your LCD and make adjustments as needed.
Have fun.

As mentioned, meter for the sky.
I usually find I need to underexpose by 1-3 stops to get the richness of the sunset colours. Also depends on where the sun is located in the frame (if at all)

I find ettl is not good at exposing people correctly in this situation. You may have to adjust your FEC for EACH shot to get it right.

Here is a quick picture I took from a mexico wedding I shot. Just a bridesmaid/boyfriend shot, so I didn't really have time to fiddle with settings.

This was lit with on-camera flash, which i actually really dislike. Lighting is very flat and boring. But going to mexico, I brought a minimalist kit and left the slaves at home. So if you can light up the people with slaves then this is definitely the way to go for a really nice looking shot with a more dramatic lighting effect.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

If you're doing full length and don't want lots of sand lit up, you'll have to manually zoom the flash.

Thank you guys for the advice! I'll be giving it a try this afternoon and hopefully have some decent images to post for critique!

These days, it seems HDR is the problem solver to get somewhat of a mixed look.

HDR can often be a problem creator, rather than a problem creator. It's even more difficult with people. In my opinion it's far easier to learn this basic exposure and lighting technique than to resort to time consuming post processing.

Oh of course, Tim. I haven't ever done an HDR image. I'm just saying, that its becoming more and more popular.

Flash + exposing for the sky is defintely the best idea. I learned from the basic film and worked up sort of.