Sunrise tips

planty

planty

planty

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10 Nov 2013
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I'm planning to get up early tomorrow morning to try and get some coastal sunrise shots. I've never shot at this time before, so hoping some of you might be able to give me some pointers.
I'll have a tripod. Roughly what sort of settings do you recommend? I'm thinking low iso, longer shutter speed to try and blur the sea?

Also, I'm wondering what the window of opportunity is... If sunrise is at 7:15, how long will there be good/interesting light for? Assuming its a nice morning!

Sorry if these are stupid questions, don't want to waste the chance if its a nice day though!
 
I'd get there a good 45 minutes before. Don't want to miss the best light. Ideally you'd have been to the location before hand so you don't have to hunt around in the dark. You'll need quite long exposure, but experiment id say! You can always go back another day.
 
Thanks! Yea I've been there before but not taken many photos there so not entirely sure of the best spots. I'll definitely get there a bit earlier to give me some prep time.
 
Just the normal landscape settings really - ISO100 and a suitable aperture for the DOF you need. Obviously smaller apertures will help you get the water blurred if that's what you want but this might be difficult once the sun is up a bit.

Can be a good opportunity to try bracketed shots if you want to take a look at doing HDR shots :) Sunsets and Sunrises are a good use of HDR and you don't need to end up with the typical looking HDR shot either if you're not a fan of those colour explosions.

Take plenty of shots and sort out what you like later but it's worth checking the shots as you take them to make sure the exposure is fine etc and it's all framed as you want.
 
Thanks Phal. The weather was really cloudy and rainy this morning so I didn't get out in the end. I'll keep it in mind when I do go though, especially the bracketed HDR stuff - read up about that and it seems pretty cool.
 
Yeah I use it a fair bit when it comes to sunsets/sunrises and other times when there's bright light and dark areas to try to expose properly.

Some cameras have built in HDR but that normally outputs into a jpg and you don't get much control over output so it's worth just shooting RAW and having a play about later :)

Photoshop has a builtin HDR script sorta thing which gives you fairly natural looking files compared to some of the stuff people imagine when they think of HDR. I keep meaning to try other software but haven't bothered yet hehe :)
 
for sunrise sunset I have always found metering with the sun itself just out of frame and then locking the exposure gives you a great start point, tweak from there then to balance the highlights and shadows.

HDR is an option as is more subtle exposure blending, take plenty of shots and bracket the exposure so you have the option when you get back to the pp session.
 
Seems silly now but I didn't even think about tide times! Thanks guys. I'll be sure to post some photos once the weather improves and I can get out there!
 
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