Best sunset/sunrise lenses

[J. Weber]

What are the best 3 sunset/sunrise lenses? I have an idea of a few but I wanted to see if I am thinking correctly.

 

[Derrel87035]

What are the best 3 sunset/sunrise lenses? I have an idea of a few
but I wanted to see if I am thinking correctly.

My choice are an odd lot, but they are the 45-P, beautiful bokeh,nice semi-wide angle, truly excellent wide-open performance at f/2.8,and very low propensity toward either flare or ghost reflections of the diaphragm.

The 105 DC is a beautiful imager...it has lovely bokeh,and shoots beautiful images in late afternoon/early evening light,and is very,very reistant to flare or ghost images of the diaphragm,so it can be pointed right at the sun,no problems.

The 100-300 f/5.6 is a beautifully-made, 100-300mm f/5.6 lens. It shoots very good images wide-open,and wide open is f/5.6. It does very well on flares or ghosting as well,and has a wonderful 100-300mm range. You can shoot this lens at 5.6 and it is very,very sharp,and there's no chance of a heptagonal OOF diaphragm image being formed on hot spots like on water at sunset,etc.

Another good sunset lens is ANY LENS YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE ON the camera. Some people like the small-aperture f/16 or f/22 sun-as-starburst effect.
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Happy Shooting!
Derrel

 

[Chris101]

I dunno - you can shoot a sunset withalmost any lens, depending on how big you want the sun to be (use a long lens) or how much of the sky it covers (use a wide angle) or if you want a close subject in it (use fill flash.)

What are the best 3 sunset/sunrise lenses? I have an idea of a few
but I wanted to see if I am thinking correctly.

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Read my blog -> http://radio.weblogs.com/0101365/

 

[RogM]

What are the best 3 sunset/sunrise lenses? I have an idea of a few
but I wanted to see if I am thinking correctly.

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I don't know if you're thinking correctly either, since most lenses will do just fine for sunsets provided you take care to expose correctly. You may wish to expose for the skyline but keep the sun out of your viewfinder, since you don't want that to govern your exposure. You also want a lens that is well-behaved when stopped down, since doing this is encouraging all kinds of ghosts. Maybe I'd prefer the 28mm f/2.8 that is simply a super lens throughout its range and handles being stopped down well. Taking good sunsets requires considerable experience to make them dramatic and eye-catching, there are lots of tricks.
-RogM