Beginner Red sun

[RKC]

Hi

How do you keep the colour of the sun red during a sunset, is a WB issue or exposure or something else

 

[MartinCornwall]

It's mainly down to exposure, stay off the auto mode.

 

[snerkler]

ND grad filters help a lot so that you can expose for the sky/sun and not have the foreground in total silhouette. If you don't use filters and try to balance exposure you often end up with a blown out sun/sky making it appear white.

 

[Alastair]

If there's not enough colour, it's an exposure problem.
If it's the wrong colour, it's a white balance problem.

 

[frizzy]

Using the cloudy white balance preset helps maintain the colours of a sunset, I've achieved some good results this way.

 

[RKC]

Thank you all for commenting, suffered blown sun to white due to bad exposure, it was something I tried few months back when sun was red will see if I can remember which photo and have a play with WB

 

[Chrisphoter]

The other alternative is to expose for the brightest area (maybe give it +1/3 EV), then either bring out the dark sky details with a RAW processor, or in Photoshop using the shadows slider.

 

[snerkler]

The other alternative is to expose for the brightest area (maybe give it +1/3 EV), then either bring out the dark sky details with a RAW processor, or in Photoshop using the shadows slider.

If you expose for the sun you're going to really struggle to get any detail in the foreground ime, even with something like my D750 which has superb shadow recovery.

 

[Chrisphoter]

If you expose for the sun you're going to really struggle to get any detail in the foreground ime, even with something like my D750 which has superb shadow recovery.

That's certainly true if you want some foreground detail. I was speaking more of predominantly sky shots, where any skyline will just be a silhouette.