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A long lens for sunsets?
Q love sunset shots, but when I am shooting with my wide-angle lens, the sun isn’t as strong in the frame as I want it to be. What can I do to make the sunset the subject?
A The field of view of your wideangle lens naturally pushes the furthest elements back in the scene and accentuates the foreground, which works a lot of the time for landscapes. However, a telephoto lens that narrows that field of view and allows you to pick out detail with the landscape will mean you can make more of something dramatic, like a sunset. The focal length you use can be anything from 200mm to 600mm, depending on how tight to the sun you want to go.
When shooting sunsets this way, if you get the exposure correct for the drama, there’s little, if anything, you need to do in Photoshop or Lightroom. I’d suggest underexposing by one or two stops, depending on whether the sun is actually in the frame or not. This boosts the drama and controls the light better as well as helping to saturate the colours. Also, don’t shoot on Auto ISO which tends to kill the colours.
Instead, choose Daylight WB, which gives a more faithful representation of what you are seeing. Make sure you don’t stare directly at the sun, or you could damage your eyes – if possible, frame up using the LCD to avoid eye damage. There is a chance you’ll get some flare in your shot, too, although this is reduced when the sun is less intense. To control it, alter your shooting position and make sure the lens hood is attached – you can further shield the lens with your hand or a cap. Lens flare can also add a little extra atmosphere to the image, so don’t feel you have to eradicate it at all.
Tech Check Megapixels
What is a ‘megapixel’ and what does it mean? A megapixel is one million pixels and each of those million pixels is a tiny ‘dot’ that makes up part of the image, like a mosaic, on your camera’s sensor.
Cameras have different numbers of megapixels in their specs, so does this mean a larger number is better? In theory, yes. The larger the number of pixels in a photograph, the more information is contained within the image. This is why manufacturers like to quote the number of pixels the camera captures, a figure that is achieved by multiplying the number of individual pixels in the height by the width of the sensor.
So a camera with more megapixels will be better than one with fewer? That depends on the definition of image quality, as well as how you are like
