Early sunrise shoot tomorrow?

[Marc1548]

Ok, so the plan is to venture out before sunrise tomorrow with a plan to take some shots of some knarley trees I know siluetted against the sunrise (or moonlight) in Windsor great park forecast looks promising & should be some moonlight aswell. I have my tripod, shutter release cable ready for some long exposures, I’m a relative beginner so would appreciate some tips. I’m guessing manual mode is the way to go? With stopped down lens low iso & bulb setting etc. Some thoughts/ ideas from experienced photographers on anything would be greatly appreciated, focussing in the dark, shutter speeds etc
Thanks
Marc

 

[ancient_mariner]

Sorry to have overlooked this thread.

OK, sunrise settings:
Meter to ensure the sky is not over-exposed, but preferably with enough exposure to recover *some* forground too.
Don't stop down beyond the sweet spot of the lens unless you need extreme depth of field.
Use a tripod & release if shutter speeds are too slow for hand holding.
Long exposures are only useful if there is something moving in the image that you want blurred.
If you want to do long exposures then use a neutral density filter, rather than a smaller than necessary aperture - f16 or smaller can sometimes make images look out of focus on a crop sensor camera (possibly like the images you have posted today?).

HTH