Persian Gulf Sunset

[Drizzt]

K, you are probably sick of the "newbie's sunsets" but I've been stuck on a ship in the middle of the gulf for the past 8 months so my choices were limited. Wondering what I could have done to have gotten a sharper sun on this one and not have it seem like it was exploding.

[Lara]

Hello and welcome, welcome, welcome.

You will most likely get a bunch of very helpful responses from the more advanced photogs here, but the first thing I notice is that you may have used digital zoom? I say this because I see a lot of pixels. So my suggestion, if I'm right, is not to use digital zoom.

[mtbbrian]

First off..
Thanks for doing your part during those eight months.
Secondly, it looks like either that the settings on your camera were at a very low resolution or perhaphs the image itself just needs some post processing.
What did you do to this particular file?
Brian
Hoo Ahh!

[gahspidy]

Welcome to the forum. And much respect and appreciation for you in being out there doing the job your doing. . .. Sunsets are cliche but they are still always beautiful, especially in this case where you have included some interesting foregrtound silhouettes. The only way I know of to get a more detailed and less blown out sun ( this is not bad in that regard) would be to use a ND filter to reduce the power of it's brightness somewhat. To improve this pic, I think I would crop out the vertical silhouette on the right side and crop very slight off the bottom to maintain aspect ratio.
On another note, this image suffers from very low resolution and I'm wondering if perhaps this was a small piece of another pic. Look forward to more from you.

[Drizzt]

I took it with a 10d with a 30-300mm sigma lens in the large format, I think I messed up in the resizing to upload onto hear.

[mtbbrian]

That could be the case too!
See Lara you know WAY more than you think you do.
Digital zoom bad!
Brian

[mtbbrian]

I took it with a 10d with a 30-300mm sigma lens in the large format, I think I messed up in the resizing to upload onto hear.

That sounds more like the culpurit.
If you have the original file, play with it and repost if!
Brian
Hoo Ahh!

[Drizzt]

hopefully this looks a little better

[villenadecorte]

WOW. Speechless. Huge improvement from the first- was it the resizing? Such an amazingly beautiful display of color.
I bet the sunset and water alone would look spectacular as well, but I do like some of your foreground matter as it gives us a sense of place.

[OldSchool]

Welcome to the group.

One thing your sun suffers from is CCD bloom (pixel sensors get oversaturated and bleed off to neighbors). What was your shutter speed? For DSLRs, there is a mechanical and electrical shutter. The electrical shutter can go faster then the mechanical, and this will exasperate CCD bloom (because mechanical shutter is still open even though your sensor is supposedly not collecting any more info). This is one of the drawbacks of DSLR vs Film.

So, the trick is to slow the shutter speed to less than max mechanical (should be in your manual). As Gary suggested, a ND filter will help. Also, stopping down (if not already) will help too.

Good luck,
Tim

[mtbbrian]

MUCH BETTER!
I shot film so digital is kind of foreign to me.
But I know all the suggestions posted here will help with such a shot.
I hope all is well for you and you are home.
Brian
Hoo Ahh!

[Drizzt]

Welcome to the group.

One thing your sun suffers from is CCD bloom (pixel sensors get oversaturated and bleed off to neighbors). What was your shutter speed? For DSLRs, there is a mechanical and electrical shutter. The electrical shutter can go faster then the mechanical, and this will exasperate CCD bloom (because mechanical shutter is still open even though your sensor is supposedly not collecting any more info). This is one of the drawbacks of DSLR vs Film.

So, the trick is to slow the shutter speed to less than max mechanical (should be in your manual). As Gary suggested, a ND filter will help. Also, stopping down (if not already) will help too.

Good luck,
Tim

Hey thanks for the advice, no one ever said anything about the shutter speed for digital being different in all the stuff I have read. Now a couple of questions:
a. What's an ND filter?
b. How could I have gotten a sharper frame on the door and still have kept the sun in focus?

[mtbbrian]

A "ND filter" is a Nuetral Density filter.
Check this link for a better explanation than I could give.

To answer your second question, I probably would have focused on the hatch. I am guessing that you were using an f/stop of 22 so the sun wwould have been in focus.
Brian