Paul Hartrick dot com

Inspired by some feedback from one my regular blog visitors, Evilwoobie and again here, I decided to write a small post on how I get some good results when shooting shots either into the sun or deliberately including the sun as a point of interest.

Let me point out straight up, I am not a qualified photographer at all, anything I say from here on seems to work for me but may not work for you , if your camera can’t deal with some of the techniques I point out below then your also out of luck…. go photograph a dog or a tree… something that all cameras are capable of.

<DISCLAIMER>

Before you go out and shoot the sun, a word of warning WATCH YOUR EYES. Nobody should have to remind you that staring at the sun will damage your eyes, your mother should have told you a million times by now, and pointing a lens that’s potentially a magnifier will increase this risk. To be on the safe side always frame up with the sun just out of shot and then quickly reposition to take the photo and don’t look directly at the sun. If you’re using a long/zoom lens try to avoid looking through the viewfinder at all when the sun is in the frame. This may not be an easy task, but playing safe is better than damaging your eyesight.

If you are using a Digital camera look at the LCD screen, if you are using an SLR, CLOSE YOUR EYES….DON’T LOOK INTO THE LIGHT

</DISCLAIMER>

As silly as it sounds…. you would be surprised…..

OK, now for the tips…
1. Reducing your exposure 1-2 stops will make the Sun look more ball like instead of this big horrible glowing orb that consumes all your contrast. Unfortunately this will darken your overall scene. The trick here is to be more artistic with the framing of the shot. You can also shoot against a reflective or bright colored foreground like snow. This technique requires some form of manual control over the exposure settings of your camera.

2. If you don’t have advanced controls on your camera, try get the sun behind some clouds to help it along. This will make the overall shot nicely exposed but still give enough Sun effect to produce a great looking shot.

3. Remember, the sun is less than 1 degree across your horizon, so if you don’t zoom to much and keep the frame reasonably wide your camera will have more of a chance to get a balanced exposure, again, especially useful on cameras without manual exposure control.

4. Silhouettes made by the sun make great focal points in your shot and can turn an OK photo into a great photo, and generally a slice of dark foreground will also improve the overall look.

5. If your camera supports it, and if you have enough large memory cards for your camera, shoot the photo in RAW Mode. This captures “bit for bit” exactly what the the camera’s image sensor saw and then you can modify all your exposures back at the computer without any loss of quality. If you do shoot in RAW mode, make sure you have a fast computer and lots of storage as my 10megapixel camera

creates a 20 megabyte file for each shot in RAW mode as apposed to around 4meg for JPEG. My guess is any professional photographer will always advise to shoot in RAW mode, but I am a realist and my shots aren’t that great, so JPEG is OK for me.

Below are two Photos I took at Diamond Head to illustrate the above techniques, and as usual they are available royalty free to anybody who cares to download them from my .Mac Gallery, Everybody loves royalty free photos, and hopefully Sun Photography royalty free digital photos…

Shot 1 was taken using Tip 1. I reduced the exposure by two full F stops. This shot is 5 10megapixel images stitched together to produce the final image. The Original file, which you may download from my .Mac Gallery, is 16megabytes.

Shot 2 was taken using Tip 2. I waited a while for the sun to go behind some clouds, plus I was too tired after the climb to head back down the mountain… This shot is 18 10megapixel images stitched together to produce the final image, yes it’s big, 57.5 megapixels big. The Original file which you may download from my .Mac Gallery, is 58 megabytes.

Both these were obviously taken on the same day, (who would be crazy enough to climb Diamond Head twice?), and as you can see two very different photos, from two different directions with two different Sun Photography techniques, and needless to say you are able to print poster size with these resolutions…

This post is tagged Diamond Head Panorama, Digital Photography, Photograph with the Sun, Royalty Free Photos