Luminous Landscape Forum > Photographing the sun

Digiteyesed

Jun 27 2007, 08:12 PM

larryg

Jun 28 2007, 12:10 PM

QUOTE(Digiteyesed @ Jun 28 2007, 01:12 AM)

OK until someone who knows exactly what to do I will give you some thoughts

Try and use a neutral density filter along with stopped down f-stop
Obviously the time of day would have different affects on the final product. Late day or early morning would be better (I would think) because of the lower angle and less intensity.

GLuijk

Jun 28 2007, 04:26 PM

You have to expose less, much less, than you would on a regular shot of the same scene but not having the sun. This will produce a more visible noise, but you will get the most of the sun. Another possibility is to take 2 shots, and severely underexposed to recover the sun from.

The developing stage is really important; use a RAW developer with a good control of highlights. ACR is not. DCRAW with its -H 2 option can recover many highlights and provide good results.

Usually a problem is to have big areas around the sun with not all, but one or two channels blown. This produces strange and incorrect colours in the area. Look at the somewaht orange ring surrounding the sun in this picture:

A correct development with DCRAW can produce this:

Mac Pizzle

Jun 29 2007, 10:21 AM

Use a small f-stop-f22 or smaller. The smaller the iris the more defined the sun will be and less blown out.

KAP

Jun 29 2007, 11:27 AM

I think this is the area digital falls down big time. Film copes better, you don't get the weird banding digital throws up or the blocky colours.
The sun in the picture you like has a starburst look because the lens is stopped down and is not diffused by cloud.

Kevin.

Digiteyesed

Jun 29 2007, 06:00 PM

QUOTE(KAP @ Jun 29 2007, 04:27 PM)

I think this is the area digital falls down big time. Film copes better, you don't get the weird banding digital throws up or the blocky colours.

Agreed on this. I'm going to have to take some bracketed shots and see if merging to HDR and tone-mapping helps. Will also have to remember to stop down.

Sheldon N

Jun 29 2007, 06:22 PM

QUOTE(Digiteyesed @ Jun 28 2007, 01:12 AM)

even when stopped all the way down and at -EV 2.

This suggests to me that you are using the exposure compensation feature to control the overexposure. I would suggest using Manual mode and then combining both increasing the shutter speed and stopping the lens down to reduce the overexposure.

If you continue to use the exposure compensation feature instead of Manual mode, no amount of adding ND filters or stopping down will solve the problem, since the exposure will always be just 2 stops underexposed from the camera meter's suggested exposure.

marcmccalmont

Jun 29 2007, 06:57 PM

Try 2 exposures one at f22 -3ev or so for the sun. The second f8 0 ev or so for the scene. Then use highlights and shadows (2 exposures) in photomatix
or
Fuji pro 160S

Marc