Sunset/sunrise advice needed

taff63

taff63

Messages
841
Name
mark
Edit My Images
Yes
Really struggling with sunset shots always seem lifeless and washed out I shoot in raw and just getting used to lightroom filter wise I use nd4 soft edge cokin (lee out of my price range )nikon d7000 camera and a 18-50 sigma lens .
any help and advice would be really appreciated before I tear out what's left of my hair .
Mark
 
Expose to the right on you're histogram but not so its blown out and pull it back left in lightroom
 
When shooting in RAW you will find that your shots do seem "flat" as they have no processing at all.

You will need to tweak the settings in LR to get. The shots to reflect what you had seen when you took the shot.

I often pull back the highlights, lift the shadows and then find the white and black points as a starting point then look at clarity/saturation/vibrancy as I feel appropriate.
 
Pretty sure this was just underexposed by a stop or so from the camera's P mode's suggested setting. Equally sure that it was SOOC, large, fine JPEG...

DSC_4654 by gpn63, on Flickr
 
Spot metered ? It's exposed for the sun not the trees!
 
I've always gone for the old advice of lock the exposure with the sun just out of frame then compose the shot and shoot this normally gives a pretty decent exposure with only the centre of the sun blown, I use a custom picture style which means the default processing is normally pretty much how I want it and then tweak as necessary in DPP or similar. I shot both these using that technique and I'm pretty happy with them:


Salvador Sunset by Alex Booth, on Flickr


Colombo Sunset by Alex Booth, on Flickr
 
taff63 said:
Tnx for all comments really appreciated
Click to expand...
Please show us an example so we can be more specific.

For instance did you have good colour to start with. We dont know what your exposures are like.
 
a1ex2001 said:
I've always gone for the old advice of lock the exposure with the sun just out of frame then compose the shot and shoot this normally gives a pretty decent exposure with only the centre of the sun blown, I use a custom picture style which means the default processing is normally pretty much how I want it and then tweak as necessary in DPP or similar. I shot both these using that technique and I'm pretty happy with them:


Salvador Sunset by Alex Booth, on Flickr


Colombo Sunset by Alex Booth, on Flickr
Click to expand...

They look underexposed to me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top