A Sun Shot That Didn't Come Out as Hoped

[sgitlin]

I was in Alaska a couple of weeks ago, and the smoke from some of the fires in northern Alaska drifted down to where we were. As we were taking an evening stroll, I noticed the smoke was causing the Sun to appear a bright orange color as it set. I rushed back up to our second-floor room (to get a better angle) and took some shots very quickly right as the Sun was setting behind some trees. Instead of getting a bright crisp outline of the Sun (as actually seen), the best I got was a slight halo effect around the Sun.

I have a Panasonic Lumix Z3 camera and used the automatic setting with some exposure bracketing for the picture at
www.pbase.com/sgitlin/image/48551320

If I had more time, any suggestions as to what settings would have given me a 'crisper' image of the Sun?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Stew

 

[ksmattfish]

Instead of getting a bright crisp outline of the Sun (as actually seen), the best I got was a slight halo effect around the Sun.

Is that how you actually see the sun? Or is that how you imagine you see the sun?

Beyond that, with any photo taken with the sun in the image you are bound to get all sorts of lens flare, chromatic abberations, and so on. It's tough to take a photo of a thermonuclear furnace.

 

[kfoster]

Your problem is that you choose a bunch of dark trees for the forground of this shot. The meter had to make a compromise between the bright sun and the dark trees. To get the sun better exposed the trees would have been underexposed creating a silouette (spelling not my strong suite), which probaboly would have been what you wanted. So basiclly you would have needed a faster shutter speed.

K