First sunset attempt

dutch27 · Jul 17, 2013

Went for a hike with the camera on a hazy day. Caught a nice splay of color when a cloud got in front of the sun. I clearly don't have a wide enough lens (using a 35-80mm from an old film body on a crop sensor) as I didn't capture as much as I wanted.

C&C is welcome. I'm posting the shot uncropped and cropped. TBH I got closer to the composition I wanted with my cell phone, lol. I hiked without my tripod so I couldn't try HDR, or multiple shots to stitch into a panorama. I feel the foreground is too dark, but when I shot at a higher exposure it blew out the colors and rays coming from behind the cloud and took all the drama/interest out of it. Hope you enjoy.

#1 - uncropped

#2 - Cropped

dutch27 · Jul 17, 2013

For fun, here's the cell phone shot so you can see the entire scene the was in front of me. Granted, I used the panorama feature to do it.

ShooterJ · Jul 17, 2013

The first two look like maybe they're underexposed.. not just the foreground.. either that or a white balance issue... but the colors seem to have come out very subdued.

Someone with a better eye will certainly contribute.

Heitz · Jul 17, 2013

Dodge & burn to accentuate the sun light breaking through ftw

dutch27 · Jul 18, 2013

The first two look like maybe they're underexposed.. not just the foreground.. either that or a white balance issue... but the colors seem to have come out very subdued.

Someone with a better eye will certainly contribute.

I don't disagree with possible underexposure. Some reading I've done on the lens I used is that it tends to be soft, so I'm not convinced part of the softness of color might be from the combo of lens and body.

Dodge & burn to accentuate the sun light breaking through ftw

Anytime I've played with those tools, I end up just making what looks like burn marks on the pictures, lol. If you feel up to it you're welcome to play with the image and see what you come up with.

Side note - someone "liked" this, I didn't even realize that was a thing on the forum! Thanks to the person who did, and I may have to start doing that myself now that I know about it. Cool feature.