Capturing sunsets with LX100

[lx100 learning curve]

I am new to this forum. Thanks to all of you for making it what it is.

There was a break in the very rainy and heavy cloud cover here in Seattle while on a walk in a wetland area at sundown. Not a mind-blowing sunset, but there was some color in the sky and reflected in the ponds.

So far my experience with the LX100 is that color in the shot is not the color I am seeing in real life, either JPG or RAW2. In this case, I was not seeing any of the sunset oranges and pinks on the LCD. I tried some exposure compensation, without getting any closer to catching what I was seeing. I was using aperture priority.

I am also new to Photoshop Elements and this is my first attempt with processing in Camera Raw. Processing brought out the sunset colors. At this time of year, the marsh grasses and plants had very little color to begin with, so nothing to be done there. I thought I had cropped out the white survey markers on both edges of the scene, but there they are.

I'm really amazed with what can be done in processing, but frustrated that processing is necessary. I did a fair amount of 35mm B&W shooting and darkroom work back in the day, but until now I haven't done anything with digital photograpy. I have a lot to learn about exposure and digital camera settings, as well as processing.

I would appreciate any guidance as to settings and exposure technique for shooting sunsets. I know that iA has a sunset scene mode. I did not think of trying that. Does anyone know what settings the LX100 uses in that mode?

 

[DDoram]

Nice capture with a great camera.

Dale

 

[yellodog]

The old rule of thumb was to expose for the sky above the sunset but with live view you can just fiddle with the exposure compensation dial and see directly on the display what happening. If you want to keep detail in the foreground you might consider HDR.

 

[Erik Ohlson]

Crisp, sharp image - Welcome Aboard!

The best 'guidance' I can suggest for Post Processing is to get Scott Kelby's book: "The Photoshop Elements"X" Book for Digital Photographers" - the "X" stands for whatever version of Elements you are using.

The reason for this recommendation is that the explanations are very clear and to the point: Kelby lists in the table of contents the actions you can use, and then the actions are explained step by step, like following a recipe in a cookbook. He does not expect you to know what was in the Adobe engineer's mind when they wrote the software. Most other books go on & on about theory but fail to say "How & Why".

As with any "manual" type book, I strongly suggest you look at it in your library - get a card if you don't have one, check out the book and take it home: take it for a test drive.

If the library doesn't have the book for your specific version, just get the latest version they have, but don't get a newer version book because there could be new stuff which might cause confusion - any older version of Kelby's book will have good info that doesn't change.

That said, one thing about exposure: highlights "want" to overexpose and "block up" or get "blown" so underexpose just a bit (I use -.66 EV) rather than bother with RAW.

Then I edit the JPEG in Elements useing "Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Shadows/Highlights" to lighten the shadows a bit if they are too dense. Elements defaults to 25% but I usually use less, I like shadows as part of a composition and I don't usually need to see every detail.

Also, in the "Shadows/Highlights dialog, the "Midtone Contrast" slider is the best to use: the "Contrast" slider under "Brightness/Contrast" isn't at all as good. And a touch of "Unsharp Mask" for a little boost in edge contrast can help although it's easy to overdo that: use the "Undo/Redo" arrows in the top righthand part of the screen to check your work.

If it's an important image, this is a good time to go get another cup of coffee, or maybe even take a walk - unlike the film darkroom, your image will be there exactly as you left it & you can look at it with fresh eyes.You can "Undo" lots of steps but once you hit "save" it's permanent.



"Measure wealth not by things you have but by things for which you would not take money"
www.flickr.com/ohlsonmh/ [email protected]

 

[lx100 learning curve]

Crisp, sharp image - Welcome Aboard!

The best 'guidance' I can suggest for Post Processing is to get Scott Kelby's book: "The Photoshop Elements"X" Book for Digital Photographers" - the "X" stands for whatever version of Elements you are using.

The reason for this recommendation is that the explanations are very clear and to the point: Kelby lists in the table of contents the actions you can use, and then the actions are explained step by step, like following a recipe in a cookbook. He does not expect you to know what was in the Adobe engineer's mind when they wrote the software. Most other books go on & on about theory but fail to say "How & Why".

As with any "manual" type book, I strongly suggest you look at it in your library - get a card if you don't have one, check out the book and take it home: take it for a test drive.

If the library doesn't have the book for your specific version, just get the latest version they have, but don't get a newer version book because there could be new stuff which might cause confusion - any older version of Kelby's book will have good info that doesn't change.

That said, one thing about exposure: highlights "want" to overexpose and "block up" or get "blown" so underexpose just a bit (I use -.66 EV) rather than bother with RAW.

Then I edit the JPEG in Elements useing "Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Shadows/Highlights" to lighten the shadows a bit if they are too dense. Elements defaults to 25% but I usually use less, I like shadows as part of a composition and I don't usually need to see every detail.

Also, in the "Shadows/Highlights dialog, the "Midtone Contrast" slider is the best to use: the "Contrast" slider under "Brightness/Contrast" isn't at all as good. And a touch of "Unsharp Mask" for a little boost in edge contrast can help although it's easy to overdo that: use the "Undo/Redo" arrows in the top righthand part of the screen to check your work.

If it's an important image, this is a good time to go get another cup of coffee, or maybe even take a walk - unlike the film darkroom, your image will be there exactly as you left it & you can look at it with fresh eyes.You can "Undo" lots of steps but once you hit "save" it's permanent.



"Measure wealth not by things you have but by things for which you would not take money"
www.flickr.com/ohlsonmh/ [email protected]

Thanks Erik. I got the Kelby Elements 15 book out of the library. Your are right, it is a great resource.

When it came to the unsharp mask and sharpening, I began to wonder if it would be beneficial to get a higher resolution monitor to judge the sharpness adjustments.

 

[Erik Ohlson]

The best part of Kelby's books is that you learn how to get results, and after you follow a number of his "recipes" you start to get a feel for how it works.

As to sharpening/unsharp mask, it becomes pretty obvious (kinda' "sparkly') when it's overdone.

As a rule, I go until it looks right and then back off about 10%.

Remember, you can select just parts of an image so the various tools just work on that area: for instance, sharpening jut a person's eyes, which makes the whole picture seem sharper.

Once on the retouching forum, there was a picture of a musical instrument next to a music stand with a score open on the stand - the OP was trying to make the photo good for an ad on eBay, I think. Among other things, I selected just the open music pages, darkened and sharpened them so the music was obvious rather than just a smear - and the person loved it, it made the whole image look sharper and more realistic.

You can also clone to a "selected" area and the clone just applies to that area.

For things like "Bokeh", select the foreground object, use "Select>Inverse" which causes everything BUT your selection to be selected, and the blur the background a bit. This can be done in stages, blurring more with more distant parts; also maybe slightly blur unimportant foreground areas just a bit. One of the best selection tools for this is the Quick Selection tool - then add things it missed by pressing 'Shift' and clicking the desired area, or "Option" -Click an area to subtract.

For difficult shapes the "Polygonal Lasso" tool works best for me, in small, even tiny, steps.







--
"Measure wealth not by things you have but by things for which you would not take money"
www.flickr.com/ohlsonmh/ [email protected]

 

[kkardster]

I'm not sure how similar the LX100 results might be, but I do like the results that my FZ200 delivers using its Sunset Scene Mode. I often take a few without it and tend to like those taken with the scene mode more. It's the only Scene Mode that I actually use (other than the occasional 3D photo).

--
Bruce
You learn something new every time you press the shutter

 

[lx100 learning curve]

Thanks. I really appreciate the tips and feedback.

 

[Vikingog]

To improve the direct JPEG result of the camera, explore the custom development settings functions on the camera, try to increase +2 saturation, -4 reduction of noise, and +2 sharpness, then you can change to taste to adjust.

This camera is not particularly optimum with the serial settings for automatic JPEG processing.