Why do I always have a camera with me, or atleast in my car? Simple, you never know when an image might present itself. Take the photos below for example, my 2 reasons, I captured the sunrise this morning on my way to drop my boys off at school. I had the camera right next to me and could see the colors starting to become more vivid as the sun was rising. I always go the same route, passing a grass farm field, and every morning (well school morning) I get to watch the sunrise. Sometimes its dark and eerie, or foggy, or rainy, but not today. Today was absolutely gorgeous and I couldn't resist to pull over on the side of the road and take, literally 2 minutes: 1 min to get the settings right, and another to capture a couple images. It's that easy and simple, so remember don't leave home without your Camera, and make sure your batteries are charged, your card is formatted, and lens clean: I will be talking about that in an upcoming post, possibly a video, so check back for that in about a week.
f/9.0 1/15th sec 800 ISO, focal length 35mm, Av Mode
f/9.0, 1/20th sec, 800 ISO, focal length 37mm, Av Mode
‘Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future.’ - Sally Mann
Sure, these pictures may border on cliches, but they are cliches that never fail
to grab us. We're all suckers for that frame-filling drama of Ol' Sol looming
large on the horizon. And we all know how to get those shots of big suns
- just shoot the horizon with that fabulously expensive, super-speed,
extralow-dispersion glass, apochromatic tele, right?
Wrong. You need a
long lens, sure, but it needn't be a budget buster. Some very good 500mm mirror
lenses come in under $200
There are all-glass 400mm, 500mm, and
600mm designs from major independents that sell for $300-500. And you can make
an existing tele longer by using a teleconverter.
That fine 300mm f/4 you bought
for nature work, for example, can be converted to a 600mm f/8 with a 2X
converter. That's a pretty good focal length for big suns. Using a 3X converter
will make a 900mm f/12, and so on.
Besides a tele, you need a sturdy
tripod -
flimsy travel models need not apply. For one thing, focusing and
framing through a long tele is far easier if the rig is well supported. For
another thing, even a little shake can blur a long-tele shot.
A spot or
limited-area meter helps, although it is not essential.
An overall meter reading
with an SLR will generally be far too high, resulting in a shot that's too dark
- even if the desired effect is a silhouette. Most big-sun shooters use the
strategy of spotmetering an area of the sky near but not immediately adjacent to
the sun - an area in which some sky tone appears. This will give you a
silhouette reading that will still maintain a little shadow detail.
And
how do you focus and compose with that big burning disk staring you right in the
eye? First, if everything in your frame is a long distance from the camera,
setting the lens to infinity is the easiest way to focus without being dazzled.
Otherwise, you may prefocuse the camera with the sun just out of the frame. You
can often recompose the scene by holding your eye a little away from the finder
to avoid being temporarily blinded by the sun. The best big-sun shots
are the ones that don't rely solely on the sun; the big sun, in fact, is best
used as a background. The landscape, the harbor scene, the city skyline - each
picture should stand on its own for it to work with a big sun behind it.
There is a pitfall here, though. Even with objects at a far distance,
they can still be out of the plane of focus of the sun, due to the effective
shallow depth of long lenses. Generally, the sun can stand to be a little soft,
so try focusing on the nearest large object in the composition. Also, use small
apertures and check the depth-of-field preview. Big-sun shots can, on
occasion, be surprisingly colorless; the sky around the sun can range from blank
white to dull gray. A filter is called for here, from the standard warming (81A
and similar) for a warm sky tone, to amber for richer color, to full orange for
an exaggerated effect.
