In this video I have some great tips for capturing a really colorful sunset
AdoramaTV presents 'Take and Make Great Photography' with Gavin Hoey.
I'm Gavin Hoey and working AdoramaTV brought to you by Adorama, the camera store has everything for us
photographers. In this video I'm going to talk about sunsets and particularly my
little technique for getting great sunsets when maybe the sunset doesn't
perform the way you hope. Now, one of the things about sunset is you just never
know what you're going to get. It is a random thing of mother nature and we've come
out today, the end of the day, beautiful scene. An hour ago it was throwing it down
with rain. Now there isn't a cloud in the sky so this is going to be the perfect
time for improving my sunset in post-production but before we get to
that I'm going to go through my tips of getting a great little sunset shot. Now, first of all you've got to
know where to shoot, so where's the sun going to set? What time is it going to set?
You can look these things up before you leave or, of course, you can find some great apps on
your phone. It will make that whole process a lot easier and allow you to plan your
location.
Next is going to be your gear. Now I'm going to be using my little Olympus camera
here and a tripod just to give me a bit more stability. I'm also going to be
shooting in RAW. That's the most important bit by far. RAW gives me the
maximum amount of control when I get back onto the computer and that is going to come
in really handy because I'm not expecting a massive sunset today but
we'll see. One thing to consider is the time of day you actually shoot your
sunset or of course sunrise if you can do early mornings which I can't. I'm down
here about 10 minutes before the official sunset time. If you could see
the sun actually going down onto the horizon, that would be terrific but for
me I think my best lighting is going to happen just after the sun has set.
That's particularly true if you have any low clouds because they will still get the light even
though the sun itself has dipped below the horizon lines, so don't rush off.
Stick around after the official sunset time, half an hour later
could be the moment where you get the best lighting. So let's just take a few
pictures as the sun sets and see what we get.
One of the reasons I wanted to come out just after a rainy day is you get puddles
and puddles are great because they will reflect the light and they often come out a little
bit darker than the sky as well so you often get a richer color that way and if I
go in close with a wide angle lens, my little puddle, and that can look really enormous and don't forget with a
dynamic range, really bright between a bright sky even a sunset and a dark
foreground, techniques like HDR can really help. Now my Olympus has a little
HDR button, I can press that and set it doing a whole bunch of HDR images
which I can then blend together to get an even better sunset. I think that looks
pretty good.
I'm shooting with an aperture of f11 and an ISO 200. Now those
two things should give me a good depth of field and a nice
low noise image but it would mean that I have a long shutter speed. That's why I'm
using a tripod just to keep everything nice and steady and if you can use a
tripod that's great. Although with a sunset you often find the aperture and shutter
speed that you get from that aperture is actually fast enough to hand-hold
but, well if you have a tripod, use it.
Of course the sunset may happen in the completely opposite direction so now I've reversed
180 degrees of my back to the sunset because I'm getting some
lovely colors off these clouds.
So what about focusing position? Where am I going to
focus to get everything nice and sharp? Well think about this, I'm using an F11
aperture. I've got a wide angle lens, 12mm which is what 24 equivalent
with this Olympus lens. Everything's going to be in focus. It almost doesn't matter
where your focus is going to be, so I just left mine on the center focus point
and we'll let that do the work. What I wanted was a giant ferry right in the middle of my shot.
That was really important to me.
Just to be clear, when I said earlier that we were going to enhance this in photoshop,
I don't mean we're going to completely fake it. I'm not going to take a midday picture and make it
look like sunset. I want to enhance my sunset pictures so I want to try and get
the best possible shot I can before I get into photoshop.
So you might be thinking, well, what about the white balance? What's the right white
balance for a sunset shot? Well, there's no real answer to that because every
sunset around the world is going to be a very slightly different color and the
color is a very personal perception as well so if you're shooting jpeg try
different white balances and try some extreme ones as well, try fluorescent for
example, however I'm shooting in RAW. That means I choose the white balance afterwards
back on the computer and it also means I can be a bit more creative with my white
balance too. That's all to come.
There is an advantage to shooting HDR sequence images even if you have no
intention of making an HDR. It gives you an option to choose the best exposure
back here and not in the field. So that's what I did. I shot bracketed shots and
I'll choose one to edit. And this is going to be the one I'm going to edit. Thing is I was
shooting at 2 stop intervals and isn't it always the way, I reckon I want to be
somewhere between those two stops so let's increase this exposure by a stop.
That's one of the lovely things about RAW. You can do that and not really
lose any quality. A few other changes to this image well I wanna bring the
highlights back, let's recover some of those and open up the shadows as well. There we go.
Colour is going to be the critical thing for my sunset. I'm going to take the saturation,
which is all of the colors and increase it a little bit, not too much. Then I'm
going to take the vibrance and go to town, really giving this a bright, colorful
exposure. Vibrance takes the low, saturated colors and increases them
first and then the more saturated colors afterwards. Now color is the key to a
great sunset. Now, if you live in part of the world that has wonderful colored
sunsets I really envy you, but for me here in the UK, that was actually
probably one of the better ones I've shot, so my little trick is about
adjusting colors to get a great sunset.
It's all about the white balance. I'm
going to come to the tint and increase the magentas and this is what really gives my
sunsets they're lovely warm tones. I'm left with temperature and if I increase
the temperature, I'm going to get a warmer shot and if I decrease it. I get a cold
shot. I actually quite like that because it gives a hint of blue in the sky and
still keep that magenta in the shadows. Now, there's a few other things I want to
change. This lower right corner looks a little bit on the bright side, as does
the sky, so let's see if we can deal with those. I'm just going to get the radial filter, I'll
drop the exposure down, maybe a stop and a half and we'll
drag out a little radial. Look at that, there we go. That works really well. We'll pop that there.
Now when you do something like that it will change the dynamics of the shot and I
think now it looks a little bit too dark,
particularly in the whites so let's increase the whites to brighten that up.
Now we're coming together really well and I can show you before and after.
That's what I shot. That's where we are with the edit. But there's one feature
that can really make this picture come alive. It's a new thing called dehaze
and you find it, well let me show you. You'll find it here under effects. Dehaze. Now
normally you use it to cut through haze in your shots and it's excellent at doing that
by increasing the amount. But I don't really want to do that, although I like
the effect. I also like it if I reduce the dehaze just a little bit. It doesn't need to
be too much and that just adds a beautiful, soft, misty feel to the image. There's a few
more things to clean up and once they're done, there
it is, my final sunset image is complete.
Well there we go. I've got some great sunset shots and there's no doubt that a little bit of
Photoshop post-processing really paid off. Now if you want to see more videos
from myself and the other amazing presenters right here on AdoramaTV, you
need to be clicking on that subscribe button right there. I'm Gavin Hoey, thanks
for watching.
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