Pink and Purple Sunset in the Suburbs

This is my favorite little piece of roofline in my sub development (is it weird to have a favorite roofline?). I use the chimney in shots with the moon all the time, and I love that I can just barely see the top of the silo across the street. It makes me feel less walled in knowing I can see something on the outside.

There was a pretty good sunset on the November 6, 2015 and I captured the changing light with every frame. It went from orange to magenta to purple.

f/7.1, 1/160 sec, ISO 1600, 300mm

f/7.1, 1/4 sec, ISO 200, 300mm

f/7.1, 1/5 sec, ISO 200, 300m

Crop and Zoom Your Way to Better Sunset Photos Without Photoshop

This might seem obvious after you hear it, but I have been playing around with my sunset photos and I noticed that the very best sunsets are the ones that fill the entire sky with eerie wisps of colorful feathery fire. Sometimes the area near the horizon is gorgeous, but snapping a wide angle photo just doesn't do it justice. Wide angle sunset photos clog up Instagram and *totally get like zero likes, amiright!?* - eh hem. So what can be done?

I like to use a zoom lens to fill the entire frame with the good stuff and crop out the boring regular clouds. This gives the impression of a sky filled with amazing color floor to ceiling, when really it could just be a thin band of color near the horizon. It's not cheating, it's composition!

You can use this technique to get some amazing sunset shots without being tempted to juice up the magic in Photoshop. Don't touch the saturation or contrast, just adjust the framing.

I went back in time through my archives to look for wide angle versions of my favorite sunset photos to show the difference. It's sort of a behind the scenes look at what the sky 'really' looked like. 

Canon T5i aperture priority mode (Av), ISO 400, 33mm cropped, f/4.5, 1/200 sec

Canon T5i aperture priority mode (Av), ISO 400, 18mm, f/4, 1/50 sec

Now you might be thinking, "come on Eric, you aren't using the same camera settings, that's not fair to attribute the better photo to the focal length and not the exposure." To which I would say I was shooting in aperture priority (Av) mode which means the camera is doing the work calculating the best exposure for what is in frame - so when I have more gray clouds in frame it tries to accommodate those as well. Tightening the shot by zooming in was the easiest and fastest way to get a better sunset photo. 

Let's try another one, here we see an unusual sky color - on it's own not bad. But next we see it being used as an abstract background that fills the entire frame.

Canon T5i, ISO 800, 53mm, f/5.6, 1/800 sec

Canon T5i, ISO 800, 300mm, f/5.6, 1/250 sec

Ok, I saved my best for third - this example really drives home the point because both the wide and tight shot use the same ISO and shutter speed. You can clearly see in the wide angle shot that the sunset is neat but nowhere near as mind blowing as the tighter shot leads you to believe. It looks like the entire sky is blood red, when really it's just a strip near the horizon. Nevertheless, it makes a nice backdrop for the utility pole - can you spot the pole down by the horizon in the wide angle shot?

Canon Rebel XT, ISO 400, 18mm, f/4.5, 1/50 sec

Canon Rebel XT, ISO 400, 300mm, f/5.6, 1/50 sec

So there you have it - some examples of how shooting sunsets close to the horizon can make a thin strip of color look like a magical magnificent sunset.

Sunset Over Indiana November 7, 2014

There was a pretty amazing sunset over Noblesville, and probably the rest of Indiana, this evening - Friday, November 7, 2014. I took these handheld, and tried to pin my elbows against my body to keep the camera as stable as possible. I'm pretty pleased that I was able to stay still at 1/13 sec, usually around 1/60 it starts to show. The wider 18 mm lens definitely helped!

Single frame, Canon T5i, ISO 100, 18mm, f/6.3, 1/13 sec, handheld

Single frame, Canon T5i, ISO 200, 35mm, f/6.3, 1/60 sec, handheld

Single frame, Canon T5i, ISO 100, 55mm, f/6.3, 1/15 sec, handheld

Indiana Sunset June 2, 2014

Single frame ISO 100, 18mm, f/5.6, 1/30 sec

Caught the crescent moon (top left) and an epic Indiana sunset last night.

Full disclosure, I did tweak it a little using Picasa's shadow tool to slide the entire histogram to the left (which basically makes the darks darker). It looks like I blasted the saturation or applied an HDR effect, but I didn't need to in this case.

Seeing Tiny Rainbows Near the Sun Makes You a Sundog Millionaire

Single frame, increased saturation, ISO 100, 1/2500 sec, f/5.6, 18mm

 

Single frame, increased saturation, ISO 100, 1/2500 sec, f/5.6, 44mm

What is that small rainbow near the sun? And that faint rainbow above it in the clouds?

A sun dog, phantom sun, mock sun, or parhelion, is a light appearing in the sky at the same elevation as the sun and 22° away from the sun. The distance from the sun is always the same because hexagonal ice crystals in the atmosphere refract the light at a consistent angle.

Sundogs are members of a larger family of halos created in this way, and can appear as pillars, small rainbows, or arcs that form a halo around the sun.

This was just a little guy - check out my parhelia pillars and lunar halo photos!

iPhone Timelapse Video of Sunset with Crescent Moon (March 3, 2014)

Here is the timelapse video I referred to in an earlier post about the sunset on March 3, 2014 that includes the setting crescent moon. I took this timelapse on my iPhone using the TimeLapse app and then went to the gym. When we got back from the gym the moon was very low over the building next door and I got some nice photos of it with my Canon T5i.

iPhone with the Glif tripod mount on my balcony railing (plugged in so it won't die in the cold)

Crescent Moon and Crescent Venus at Sunset

It's going to be -15°F on Tuesday, and we're supposed to have a snow storm all weekend. My camera attachment for my Orion EQ-1 mount came in the mail so I can finally set it up - but... it's freaking freezing out and I'm half sick.

ISO 800, 53mm, f/5.6, 1/800 sec

ISO 800, 300mm, f/11, 1/50 sec

When I saw the crescent moon setting above some pink and purple clouds, I did take my camera and tripod out onto the balcony for a few shots. Can't waste this weather. Clear skies were a rare commodity in December.

I'm eager to try a "real" moon photo with my T5i, stacking in Registax from a fixed tripod. For now, I just have a few frames taken while the sky was still blue.

ISO 200, 300mm, f/11, 1/40 sec

Originally ISO 200, 300mm, f/11, 1/160 sec, brightened in Photoshop

Same image as above with the settings jacked up to look cool!

ISO 800, 300mm, f/11, 1/250 sec

I'm really surprised how clear Venus turned out! I didn't even recognize it at first, I saw a bunch of contrails and jets and then this white dot about to go behind the clouds. I figured it must be Venus because it has been extremely bright recently, but I never thought I'd be able to resolve the crescent shape with just my camera lens. Maybe it's sharper because of the high f-stop, or maybe it's just my first time shooting Venus with my higher resolution camera. Either way, this is pretty cool!

Sunset Photos Experimenting with Depth of Field

Adjusting depth of field with f-stop alone

1/400 sec, f/11, ISO 200, 300mm

1/1000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200, 300mm

1/1000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200, 300mm

1/640 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200, 300mm

1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200, 180mm

1/320 sec, f/11, ISO 200, 300mm

Indiana Sunset August 12, 2013

Kinda reminds me of Cloud City

Cloud City wide view

Nailed it! Didn't even touch this one in post!

Sunset Reveals Dust on My Image Sensor

I've had these two trouble spots for about 6 months now, probably dating back to when I changed lenses in the middle of a windy field. I can't tell if they are on the lens or the image sensor. Is there a way to tell just by looking at the image? I bought a rubber blower thing but I can't seem to get rid of these little pieces of debris!

Update: Success!!!! Duh

Blood red sunset over Indiana on June 17, 2013

My west-facing balcony is really paying off! I can easily check the sky conditions at any time. I saw this bright burning sky while I was on the phone with my mom and I said "I gotta go, there is a really cool sunset and it can't wait."

Not only can I not multi-task, but I had to use my phone to record a timelapse video (bottom).

  The TimeLapse app () on my phone now has smart exposure, so you can see it constantly trying to keep up with the changing light. 

Amazing sunset over McDonald's parking lot gets better with Instagram HDR filter

HDR filter with Instagram

You never know where you'll be when nature presents an amazing spectacle like this sunset over a McDonald's parking lot in Indiana. I'm so glad the iPhone camera is decent enough to capture these moments when I don't have a camera on hand. The photo above was cropped and filtered with the Instagram HDR setting. Below is the original with slightly less impressive but still fully awesome colors.

Original photo from iPhone camera