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How can I take realistic sunset and sunrise pictures with a Canon PowerShot sx160?
These two pictures are:
1) Yesterday’s sunset (about 3:15 PM).
2) This morning’s sunrise (about 9:45 AM).Attachments:
What’s your narrowest aperture possible? If you can get to f/22 or up, it can produce a ”sun-star” effect, which can be interesting. Also, look at the clouds formations.
I prefer the first one which is more zoomed than the second one because it brings the focus on the sunset.- This reply was modified 54 years, 11 months ago by .
“Yesterday’s sunset (about 3:15 PM).
This morning’s sunrise (about 9:45 AM).”Wow, where do you live? The North pole?
I like these. I think you would be well served with a graduated ND filter on your lens to match the exposure in the foreground some. Try using a filter in LR to bring up the exposure on the lower part of the images and see if you like it.
What do you mean by realistic? How are the shots you took not realistic?
Incredible sunset color! The telephone wires are very distracting; could you have moved out into the field a little more?
Make sure there are interesting subjects in your foreground. You almost have something in the sunrise shot. I think I would have incorporated more of the road as leading lines to draw you’re eyes out toward the sunrise.
Wow, where do you live? The North pole?
Ha Ha! 🙂 Not quite. Only 2187 miles away though!
Unfortunately, @Mr-Quebec, the SX160’s maximum aperture is probably only f/8, so there’s not much of a “Star-burst” effect.
“@Sarah”, One thing I would recommend is to clean your camera lens. The first shot shows some “flaring/ghosting” which is a common effect when you’ve got grime or grease or fingerprints all over the lens.
- This reply was modified 54 years, 11 months ago by .
For those of you who don’t know, this is what aCanon Powershot sx 160 looks like.
😮Thanks for the sugestions, I have now cleaned my lens, and when there comes a day when we can actually see the sunset again (when it is not cloudy), then I can run out into the field and try to get a better picture without the wires in it.
What I mean by realistic is that I want the picture to look like what I see in real life, with my own eyes.
These pictures are just taken with “auto”. I want to know how to improve with the camera I have.
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These pictures are just taken with “auto”. I want to know how to improve with the camera I have.
I see that you have a ”P” mode, which stands for ”Program AE”. It means that you can change some the camera’s settings, while at the same time the camera will adjust the shutter speed and aperture automatically. A few advantages from P over Auto :
1. You can choose if you want a flash or no.
2. You can adjust your ISO.
3. You can adjust your exposure compensation.
4. You can adjust the White Balance.
(P.S. now this is what I can adjust on the P mode of my camera. It is possible that yours will be slightly different.)- This reply was modified 54 years, 11 months ago by .
I know exactly what you mean now, @Sarah, by realistic!
I wondered long about the same thing, how to make a “picture look like what I see in real life, with my own eyes”, and still do wonder sometimes. 🙂
First, I must say that it is not always possible to capture what you see, straight from the camera. The camera is not nearly as complex as our created eyes. Sometimes it requires special equipment, or post-processing work, or taking control of light sources. The more you shoot, the more you’ll start to see what situations are easier or harder to capture as “realistic”, but setting caveats aside, here are two things to start thinking about every time you point your camera at something:
1. From what direction is Light coming from?
2. How is the camera reading that Light?Is light coming from behind you? from the side? straight into the lens? a combination of directions? Is the light “ambient”, or indirect? How much light is each source creating? Are you in the shade? in direct sunlight? or under incandescent bulbs? Being aware of what type of light is around you is the first step to knowing how to take pictures like what your eyes are seeing.
Based on the type of light that is around you, you can start to guess how the camera will respond. In Auto or P modes, the camera will read the available light and automatically spit out a combination of settings that it thinks will create a “realistic” picture. It is using Automatic Exposure (AE). Under normal lighting situations, the camera will do a pretty good job: the camera will take a picture close to what you’re eye sees.
But what if it’s not a normal lighting situation? Say, sunset, or walking through a cave? That’s when the camera doesn’t really know what to do. The Automatic Exposure functionality isn’t smart enough to accurately read the light any more. So what do you do? That’s when people start moving over into the manual modes. If you know how to use manual settings, then your brain is what is actually in control and you can tell the camera whatever you want it to do. Using the manual modes, you are overriding what the camera thinks is “realistic” and actually creating pictures that are “realistic”.
I would start easing into shooting with manual settings by 1) doing what @Mr-Quebec suggested, start shooting in P for everything, and 2) start using Exposure Compensation to make your pictures brighter or darker (albeit accurately “realistic”) than what the camera suggests.
Depending on how well you know your camera, this should keep you busy for a while. 🙂
What does “Exposure Compensation” mean.
It is simply meaning brighter or darker images. Example : You take a picture, but for a reason or another, the picture seems too dark. You just have to increase your exposure compensation to have a brighter picture. A positive number means a brighter picture, while a negative number means a darker picture. (Ex. -1 compensation will be darker than the original picture, but +1 compensation will be brighter.)
That is a phenomenal image! Very colorful and interesting elements to look at throughout.
I’m not seeing a 1:1 preview, but you need to make sure the reeds in the foreground are very much in complete focus; they need to be tack sharp. Good effort to exclude the telephone wires; keep cropping or bring the clone tool to them. Also, edit out the spot of pink glare just below the sun.
Many pictures pointing into the sun have much more glare than this. Do you know the reason why there isn’t more glare in this shot than just that small pink spot?
@Sarah, you could always use the clone/heal tool in GIMP.
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It all depends on what program you can use to make the edit.
I’m glad @buddingphotographer knew of the right tool to use in GIMP. As an Adobe user, I would use the Spot Removal Tool in Lightroom or the Clone Tool in Photoshop. I would try cloning from directly beneath where the pink spot currently is.
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