How to capture the perfect sunset?

[Ian]

I have been playing about with my digital camera, and noticed the sky outside my window looked incredible! I have a direct sunset view every night

Do you have any tips on how to capture the perfect sunset? I had to aim the camera rather high in these pictures because the view outside is looking over to a Beer Factory, not the most idyllic setting

I'd really like to be able to take a good shot of the sunsets here, as some of them are amazing!

 

[Ian]

Sunset 1

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[Ian]

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[Matt Jason H]

Tripod, Slowest Exposure, Higest Resoultion works best for me.

 

[Ian]

What would the slow exposure do? I understand that I would get trailing effects in fast paced places, but what does it do in stationary (more or less) shots?

As you can tell, I need to learn a lot about composure!

 

[Matt Jason H]

Well it just adjusts the time the shutter stays open (and/or sometimes the aperture size), which lets much more light hit the film, well sensors. It'll give you more brightness and better colour, you can over-do it though. Have an experiment on the same sunset with Minimum, then Maximum exposure and see the difference.

Oh Also, have you ever thought about taking a panoramic picture of the sunset? If you take lots of photographs at a different angle each time, you can paste them all together in an image editor and get a really wide, impressive picture.

 

[Ian]

I'll have to give this a go tonight and see what it looks like! No idea how to change this setting on the camera, so will have to read the manual tonight

 

[Quadophile]

Ian,

If you need to capture the beautiful sunset the exposure needs to be longer as light levels may be low. Also play with the White Balance since it can make a great difference in colors. Yes the manual will help in this case.