Sunset advice

[Born_2_Kill_83]

As some of you know I bought myself a camera last week and had the opportunity last night to take some pictures of the sunset near my house.

I'm not very happy with them tbh, so some advice would be nice on how to make them better, Ive even included a picture with some glare from the sun, I couldnt believe how hard it was actually, getting the right amount of light down the camera from a landscape I could hardly look at it was so bright.

 

[PaulStat]

With these sort of shots you ideally need to wait for the sun to either be on the horizon, for the sun to dip behind some clouds, or to have fully set, otherwise it's just waaaay too bright as you can see.

 

[RaV]

As Paulstat said.

Also it depends if you want to do any post work or not. Blending multiple exposures, not necessarily in hdr software(masks in photoshop are my preferred method) or you will have to invest in some graduated ND filters to help reduce the skys brightness.

Always keep the ISO as low as possible, no need for 800 in the first one. As you will reduce the dynamic range that your camera can record as the ISO goes up.

One tip if you have a tripod is too, take multiple shots and in one of them block out the sun with your finger, so that you do not have a lens flare in the foreground. And then you can remove your finger with a fingerless version.

Also be careful cause your camera will often have trouble focusing with such a bring light in front of it, maybe you noticed that? So you may need to focus first without the sun in the frame

 

[Born_2_Kill_83]

It was hard to find a balance, hence the ISO @ 800 as Exposure Compensation was at +2, it was to dark the other way round. Like already said maybe next time I will make it easier on myself and wait for it the sun to go down, then I could slow the shutter speed down.

 

[Amp34]

The shutter speed on the first was 1/4000th, the limit for the 1000D I assume.

You also had the Aperture wide open by the looks of it, which you don't want in a shot like that.

For that sort of shot you really need to shoot fully manual.

 

[OG]

Also noticed your using a low aperture value. It wouldn't make much to the above pics but in future it would be worth stopping down to f/8 of f/11 as it will maximize the DOF and also make the pictures slightly sharper

 

[Razor-BladE]

Stick the ISO to 100 if possible, otherwise 200. Bump the aperture to about f/8-11 as said above. And the shutter speed will adjust accordingly if you're shooting Av, because shutter speed is the least important factor when taking scapes because the scenery isn't going anywhere. Of course make sure it's at a suitable speed though.
If you're shooting manual, set the above and choose a ss you think will work, then you can just see whether it's too dark or too bright and adjust the shutter speed appropriately. Use the histogram (press display button when viewing the image) to make sure you're not unintentionally overexposing anything.