Pentax K10D, Pentax SMC-A 50mm f/1.7 (manual focus), ISO 200, f/1.7, 1/100 sec, +0.7 EV, IS on

Had to drop by the DMV office yesterday to trade in my Tennessee driver’s license for an Alabama version. Of course I took my camera with me ;-) I didn’t take any pictures of the folks waiting with me in the lobby. It was too quiet and crowded and they were a bit of a surly looking bunch. I tried to take a picture while I was at the Trooper’s desk but she said it was “against the law.” Anyway, after a relatively brief 30 minute wait I was on my way out the door when I snapped this quickie.

This image is as close to SOOC (straight out of the camera) as I get. All I did was import the RAW image into Lightroom using my mild default import processing and exported it as a JPEG to Photoshop where I added the black bars. I’ve started adding black bars to make my uncropped images square. Being an avid Flickr-er I prefer square crops as I think they look best as thumbnails and in my photstream.

Pentax K10D, Pentax SMC-A 50mm f/1.7 (manual focus), ISO 100, f/1.7, 1/800 sec, +0.7 EV, IS on

While my wife was doing a little shopping I wondered around 18th street in Homewood, AL and took a few photos. I used to work at the bike shop right down the street from here.

Pentax K10D, Pentax SMC-A 50mm f/1.7 (manual focus), ISO 1000, f/1.7, 1/25 sec, +0.7 EV, IS on

Lots of rain here tonight. Good thing my Pentax K10D is weather sealed ;-) Nice video to set the mood: Rain Song

UPDATE: Apparently this photo was just the beginning. This morning the Auburn area was hit by a series of tornadoes. Fortunately, we escaped without damage as two tornadoes passed just to the north and south of us. There was some damage to houses and businesses but so far we are hearing that there have been no injuries. There was lots of lighting and wind and a crazy amount of rain. Our entire back patio and yard was flooded and the alley turned into a white water river. I took a second to venture out of our bathroom closet to take this picture during the height of the storm:

Here’s the view out front. What the heck are these folks thinking?

Now they are forcasting snow tonight after this front moves through. Got to love Alabama weather!

Here’s the above image without processing in Lightroom:

As you can see it was a grey and dreary day. I tried to manage the exposure to make sure I kept some cloud detail in the highlights of this photo. However, this meant the foreground was a bit dark. It got even darker when I pulled back the Exposure to -1 to really get the sky to pop. So, I dialed in a big handful of Fill Light and a touch of Recovery. Finally, I tweaked the individual color Luminance sliders to get the blue sky and the yellow crane to really pop. I applied similar settings to the rest of the photos I took with varying results:

Unfortunately there was a locked fence around the facility which greatly limited my composition options. I’ll have to try again sometime when there is better light.

There are few things more beautiful than a good sunset or sunrise photograph. However, if you’ve ever tried to do it you know it can be frustrating. How many times have you seen a beautiful sunset like the one above only to have your photo turn out something like this?

There are a couple of easy things you can do to get great sunset photos. First, turn off your flash. The only thing the flash is good for during a sunset is to add fill to illuminate a foreground subject. Unfortunately, getting the right mix of fill flash and background exposure can be very tricky:

Not a very inspiring photo (though after the number of rum punches I had I didn’t care). For now, let’s just turn the flash off and focus on capturing a brilliant sunset photo.

Next, set your white balance to auto. You can also try daylight but I have always found the auto setting gives the best mix of deep blues, pinks, reds and oranges.

I like to shoot sunsets with a wide angle lens to get as much of the sky in the picture as possible. This ensures a full mix of colors from the darkest indigo blues overhead to the brightest pinks and oranges at the horizon. Usually I leave only a strip of ground/foreground across the bottom to anchor the photo- letting the sky dominate the scene for maximum impact.

The main challenge with sunset photos is getting around the camera’s matrix metering’s natural tendency to balance exposure across the frame. The camera doesn’t know what’s going on and tries to balance the dark foreground with the bright background. The washed out example at the top is what you get when you just point-n-click. To get a decent sunset exposure you either need to dial in some negative exposure compensation (usually -2/3EV to -1EV). An easier method is to just aim the camera at an unobstructed portion of the sky, focus, lock exposure, recompose, and shoot. I typically use a little of both.

For the best sunset photos I typically like to wait for the sun to be fully below the horizon. That beautiful glowing orange ball of the sun absolutely wrecks exposure on a camera and typically results in pretty disappointing shots. Also, some cloud texture in the sky helps provide a good mix of colors. Be sure to look behind you as many times clouds away from the setting sun pick up some awesome colors. Finally, some good foreground silhouettes can help add additional visual interest (especially helpful if the sky itself is not as dramatic as it could be).

A medium aperture like f/8-f/10 is best to ensure the best detail and sharpness across the frame and eliminate vignetting typical at larger apertures when shooting at a wide zoom setting. Since I generally like to wait for the sun to drop fully, there’s typically not very much ambient light. This means I either need to be shooting on a tripod at a low ISO and slow shutter speed or bump the ISO up to prevent camera shake. These samples were all shot hand-held at ISO 200-400 and f/8 and f/10 at around 1/4 second. The combination of the K10D’s in-body IS and the wide focal length meant it only took a few tries to get sharp shots (wider zoom angles can be hand held at slower shutter speeds than longer ones).

Typically a properly shot sunset photo doesn’t require much post-processing. Since I shoot everything in RAW I have to tweak sharpness and saturation on all my photos in Lightroom. I can also play around with the white balance a bit to get the best pop from my images- though the as-shot (Auto) setting worked best for these images. Often I find the fluorescent WB preset works well for sunsets for some reason.

While a DSLR gives the most control over all of these settings, I have gotten wonderful sunset photos with a pocket camera by simply turning off the flash and using the focus, recompose and shoot method. Here is a collection of some of my other sunset photos on Flickr.

The most difficult part about getting good sunset shots is being at the right place at the right time with your camera. I hope this helps you get that great shot the next time that happens!