Sunset Photography Tips

Discuss everything including the optimal equipment, seasons, techniques and tips for capturing excellent photos.

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Matt
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Share your Sunset photography tips here.


A few to get started:

Sunsets are far brighter than the foregrounds... so either shoot two photos, exposing for each, or use a Graduated Neutral Density Filter to balance them out.
thedeepestsleep
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A big tip...the light show that might occur after sunset is much better than the actual sunset much of the time. Sometimes the color can stay around for up to an hour after sunset. Also, if you have a lot of clouds, long exposures after sunset showing the motion can look pretty awesome. Some ND filters can be helpful for this.

Here's a shot I took an hour after sunset, where the colors stayed in the clouds for a long time.

Image
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnbilous/6255476891/]Sunset Blast...[/url

2 minute exposure, F3.5, ISO200.

Hope this helps some people!
Last edited by thedeepestsleep on Sun Dec 25, 2011 10:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Matt
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Posts: 13374
Joined: Sun Apr 23, 2006 5:01 pm
Camera Model: Olympus OMD EM-1 m1, m2; Panasonic GM5, Osmo Pocket
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If shooting during the day, a polarizing filter will help cut down on reflections, but at the same time, it will also remove the blue reflections that make water appealing to the viewer. I use a CPL and turn it to get about 30% of the polarizing effect, which still maintains the majority of the blue reflections from the sky.
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