Red Sun didn't turn out red... why ?

Last night the Sun was very red as it approached the horizon. I grabbed the D40 w/18-105 lens and captured what I thought were some great shots. My excitement was tempered with caution as I viewed them on the LCD.... they didn't look red. Now that I have them downloaded to my computer, the Sun is not red, but more yellow with a tint of orange. What happened ? I tried both Auto and Programmed Auto modes. Why was I unable to record the red Sun as I saw it ?

Thanks.

Assuming that Auto includes Auto White Balance? If so then the camera compensated for the "excessively" red sky. The "balance" in white balance means that the camera wants to removed color casts to create an average or neutral set of tones. Chose a "daylight" setting instead.

If you are looking at the disk of the sun itself you may also have blown the red channel, causing the sun to look yellow.

Maybe both reasons.
--
Werner
http://wernerg.smugmug.com

Werner Gansz said:

Assuming that Auto includes Auto White Balance? If so then the camera compensated for the "excessively" red sky. The "balance" in white balance means that the camera wants to removed color casts to create an average or neutral set of tones. Chose a "daylight" setting instead.

If you are looking at the disk of the sun itself you may also have blown the red channel, causing the sun to look yellow.

Maybe both reasons.
--
Werner
http://wernerg.smugmug.com

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Nice explanation.
Sunsets/rises are very challenging (maybe impossible ?) for "autopilot".

Werner Gansz said:

Assuming that Auto includes Auto White Balance? If so then the camera compensated for the "excessively" red sky.

Click to expand...

That was my first thought, the camera doesn't know from sunsets - the metering simply picked up a massive amount of red & decided to dump it.

Thanks to all who replied. So I'll change the white balance to outdoors. Will it also help to focus on something besides the disc of the Sun... if that's possible ?

Red,

Next time you have an opportunity like that experiment. Try different white-balance settings, exposure modes and certainly experiment with jpg/raw captures and post-processing. Getting your vision of what you remember on the screen is all about process and technique. Enjoy the art as well as the science.

red sled said:

Thanks to all who replied. So I'll change the white balance to outdoors. Will it also help to focus on something besides the disc of the Sun... if that's possible ?

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I would say, get the exposure right at the scene and experiment with white balance in post (as well as saturation/vibrance or picture controles).

red sled said:

Last night the Sun was very red as it approached the horizon. I grabbed the D40 w/18-105 lens and captured what I thought were some great shots. My excitement was tempered with caution as I viewed them on the LCD.... they didn't look red. Now that I have them downloaded to my computer, the Sun is not red, but more yellow with a tint of orange. What happened ? I tried both Auto and Programmed Auto modes. Why was I unable to record the red Sun as I saw it ?

Click to expand...

Scene modes and green-auto mode work fairly well for snapshot type scene of typical content. But when the lighting gets challenging, then you have to resort to the techniques photographers use.

Let me first say that P mode on your dial is not at all like Auto or scenes. P mode is part of the "creative" group of exposure modes...PSAM.

As a starting point for setting white balance, ask yourself if the color of the light is an important element of the scene. For sunsets and shots by candlelight, the answer is usually yes. For most scenes the answer is no. When the color of the light is an important element of your scene, then use Daylight white balance as a starting point. If the color of the light is not an important element of your scene, then set the white-balance appropriately...a custom white-balance being the best option.

As for metering the sun...you can spot meter an area just off to the side of the sun. You can do this in manual mode and then just recompose and shoot, or if using an auto mode (A, S, or P) then meter and then use your AE-Lock to lock exposure. Then you can recompose and shoot. That will usually give you a nice red sky with a bright sun. If you really want the sun itself to be red then spot meter the sun directly.

.

Try two things to see if it helps.
1. Set white balance to Cloudy
2. -0.7 EV

Sunlight at day's end is going thru a lot more air/moisture/clouds and the WB setting will give a better rendering of the sky. Adjusting the exposure value will also help when shooting into sunlit sky. It's a quick fix that may help in your quest. Works well as a starting point for me when I'm shooting out over the Pacific at sunset. Shooting Raw and adjusting white balance later is also a good option. Good luck!

red sled said:

Last night the Sun was very red as it approached the horizon. I grabbed the D40 w/18-105 lens and captured what I thought were some great shots. My excitement was tempered with caution as I viewed them on the LCD.... they didn't look red. Now that I have them downloaded to my computer, the Sun is not red, but more yellow with a tint of orange. What happened ? I tried both Auto and Programmed Auto modes. Why was I unable to record the red Sun as I saw it ?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

As other mentioned it could be caused by an improper white balance but more often than not in very high contrast scenes like sunsets and sunrises, the problem arises because the auto exposure tries to compensate for that intense contrast by either underexposing or overexposing. Even a slight overexposure on the camera's part will render the red sun as orange or yellow. I assume your camera was set to matrix metering. In scenes like this where metering is paramount, switch to spot metering and try to find an area of the sky which would approximate middle gray in light intensity. You can always fine tune your final exposure by using exposure compensation as well.

Maybe there is a preset scene mode for sunsets or sunrises on your camera. Try it. These automatic modes work wonders sometimes.

--
http://www.photomfleury.com

JoeNap2 said:

Try two things to see if it helps.
1. Set white balance to Cloudy
2. -0.7 EV

Sunlight at day's end is going thru a lot more air/moisture/clouds and the WB setting will give a better rendering of the sky. Adjusting the exposure value will also help when shooting into sunlit sky. It's a quick fix that may help in your quest. Works well as a starting point for me when I'm shooting out over the Pacific at sunset. Shooting Raw and adjusting white balance later is also a good option. Good luck!

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+1 WHite balance to cloudy is the trick. Has worked like a charm for me.

I think for this sort of "atmospheric lighting" you need to capture several different exposures, and also use raw so you can tweak the white balance later.

Here are a couple I was trying, one evening light and the other morning. I had to try a series of different exposures to get what looked right on the screen. The second one the colour is correct, but maybe needs to be a bit brighter. (these are re-sized jpegs by the way, original was raw converted by ViewNX)

Its hard to escape the logic of shooting RAW for this example

Why anyone would bother standing in front of a beautiful sunset chimping the white balance beats me......
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/john_clinch/

As mentioned above, the auto-white balance is the culprit. The other important thing is to not let the sun burn out, lest you lose the red colour information.

I use this cheat, and works on any camera. Pop the flash. When the flash is up on any camera, even one with no manual controls. The camera will shift the colour balance towards the warm side to even out the coolness of the flash.

--
http://1000wordpics.blogspot.com

RobCMad said:

I would say, get the exposure right at the scene and experiment with white balance in post (as well as saturation/vibrance or picture controles).

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I think you are right... but I'd go one step farther!

Shoot RAW, and bracket exposures over at least a 10 stop range. Go from 3 stops "over" whatever was chosen as the starting point, and take 10 shots with each exposed at 1 stop less.

Now, to me that brings about an insurmountable problem! I simply do not shoot sunsets and sunrises because of this! (I also don't like Aurora or fireworks for the same reason.)

The above gives you 10 raw files, from which can be produced at least 100,000 equally great looking images! Maybe a million. They are all fabulous too. But you might as well use a random number generator to decide which configuration of the raw converter is best. Trying to decide any other way is just excessive frustration!

Seriously, each of the above exposures will look really neat with any of 10 different settings for White Balance, any of 10 different settings for contrast, any of 10 different settings for saturation, any of 10 different settings for contrast, and of 10 different amounts of sharpen, and any 10 different ways to crop the image. That may be a bit conservative at only 10 settings for each, but it does add up to a million different wonderful images per exposure.

Shoot that three times and you either have to quit doing that, or take up processing the exposures you've already got as a life's work.

On the other hand, I do know at least a couple folks that love to shoot sunsets because it's the only way (according to them) that they are assured of getting at least one good picture today. That's hard to argue with...

stuntmonkey said:

As mentioned above, the auto-white balance is the culprit. The other important thing is to not let the sun burn out, lest you lose the red colour information.

I use this cheat, and works on any camera. Pop the flash. When the flash is up on any camera, even one with no manual controls. The camera will shift the colour balance towards the warm side to even out the coolness of the flash.

--
http://1000wordpics.blogspot.com

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That works for me too...or I just dial in some neg ec.
--
jakes
WSSA# 107

Do you have an example of the photo where we can all see it?

In addition to WB settings it could also be that the dynamic range of the image you were trying to capture was beyond what the camera was capable of capturing - in a single exposure...

If in the frame of what you were shooting you had a very bright sky at say, the top 1/3 of the frame and then in the middle 1/3 you had a moderately lit portion of the frame - say a stream and then at the bottom 1/3 of the frame there was a very dark/shadowed stretch; it's possible that in addition to the WB, the dynamic range was more than what the camera could compensate for in a single exposure.

So in addition to your WB settings - what exposure mode were you using? IE: Matrix, Center or spot?

One of the tricks used for images with a lot of variance in dynamic range is "bracketing", which I do not believe that the D40 is capable of (without doing so manually).

Without seeing your image, I would guess it is overexposed.

Back when using slide film, I bracketed my sunsets. Depending on other circumstances, underexposure of .5 to 1 stop generally produced the most pleasing results. Slide film is notorious for being very unforgiving to over/under exposure.

john Clinch said:

Its hard to escape the logic of shooting RAW for this example

Why anyone would bother standing in front of a beautiful sunset chimping the white balance beats me......
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/john_clinch/

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I totally agree. RAW is king.