Shooting the M6 Mark II into a sunrise

A pretty sunrise over midtown Toronto distracted me this morning from my coffee and crossword.

The lack of critical sharpness from my old lens aside, I found the dynamic range of this tiny sensor to be really quite impressive.

Beautiful - thanks for sharing 

davecheng wrote:

A pretty sunrise over midtown Toronto distracted me this morning from my coffee and crossword.

The lack of critical sharpness from my old lens aside, I found the dynamic range of this tiny sensor to be really quite impressive.

Nice!

Nice shot! That's quite a brilliant sunrise.

I'm not sure what you're used to, but the M6 Mark II doesn't have what I would consider a "tiny" sensor. Maybe if you're coming from medium format or something.

Also, I'm slightly disappointed that you didn't literally shoot the camera into a sunrise. That would have been exciting.

Nice view. Thank you.

Maybe play with a version that wasn't entirely monochromatic also?  Just for kicks.

R2

davecheng wrote:

A pretty sunrise over midtown Toronto distracted me this morning from my coffee and crossword.

The lack of critical sharpness from my old lens aside, I found the dynamic range of this tiny sensor to be really quite impressive.

Very nice image. The M6 II does have a great dynamic range. I think your shot was helped by the Sun shining through some clouds and haze which diminished its brightness to the point where you could capture its disk. Also the shaded side of the buildings look to have had some skylight and perhaps reflected light from other buildings which also brightened the shadows some.

I've found that in Florida, with a clear-sky sunrise or sunset, it's difficult to capture the Sun's disk with the M6II unless I intentionally underexpose by 1, 2 or even 3 EV (exposure compensation). Or take an HDR shot, which I've come to dislike as I can't get a RAW image for the best post-processing. For a clouded or hazy sunrise/sunset dimming the Sun, it's possible without exposure comp.

Here are some examples, I happened to shoot tonight's sunset on a bike ride with the kit EF-M 15-45 IS STM, this is typical of a clear sky sunset:

Canon M6 Mk II, 15-45mm IS STM, 17mm, ISO 100, 1/400s, f5.6, -0.3 EV exposure compensation

Here's this morning's sunrise, intentionally underexposed 1.3 EV -- it just captures the Sun's disk but there is virtually no shadow detail.

Canon M6 Mk II, EF-S 55-250mm IS STM (additional cropping), ISO 100, 1/4000s, f5.6, -1.3 EV exposure compensation

davecheng wrote:

Larry Rexley wrote:

Very nice image. The M6 II does have a great dynamic range. I think your shot was helped by the Sun shining through some clouds and haze which diminished its brightness to the point where you could capture its disk. Also the shaded side of the buildings look to have had some skylight and perhaps reflected light from other buildings which also brightened the shadows some.

Thanks. I guess I did cheat a bit. My image was a RAW file, exposed more or less for the highlights in the sky,. The building shadows were opened up around two stops in Lightroom. All said, I think it still holds up well.

Both of your images are straight out-of-camera?

A little standard processing was done, but it's fair game to bring up shadows if needed or adjust curves, every scene is different and the camera often doesn't know what we had in mind when shooting the scene. What's important is what the camera is capable of given the range of processing we can do.

Here's tonight's sunset.... exposed entirely for the Sun's disk and sky colors, letting the buildings go to black silhouettes was the intent, however the buildings actually hold a slight amount of detail. This is the JPG straight out of the camera.

Canon M6 Mk II, EF-S 55-250mm IS STM at 250mm, f5.6, 1/1250s, ISO 100, no exposure compensation

Another sunset from last night, this one with the EF-S 18-135mm IS STM at 42mm. It's tricky to get the right exposure to get the 'disk' --- in this case I set the camera on manual mode and just adjusted shutter speed until it 'looked right' in the EVF. The Sun's disk almost blew out to highlight.  I shoot a lot of sunrise/sunset photos, it's a great time to go out on the bicycle.  Slight adjustments to gamma, shadow, highlight brightness in DPP 4.0, a little noise reduction. Daylight balance but no color adjustments, this is pretty much what it looked like in person. No cropping or downsizing. The lens isn't the sharpest in the world, but it's pretty consistent across its range and very versatile.

R2D2 wrote:

Nice view. Thank you.

Maybe play with a version that wasn't entirely monochromatic also? Just for kicks.

R2

OK, just to show that I'm not entirely against monochromatic...

Sandhill Sunrise.  M6ii + 100-400ii + 1.4x iii

R2

ps. Nice sunrises Larry!

davecheng wrote:

R2D2 wrote:

Nice view. Thank you.

Maybe play with a version that wasn't entirely monochromatic also? Just for kicks.

Thanks. I wasn't actually sure what you meant by the monochromatic comment. The colours in that photo are pretty much out-of-camera, daylight balanced.

I often like to play with the colors in scenic shots (urban or otherwise).  Sometimes there’s another photo in there waiting to come out.  Same principle as trying different crops.

R2

davecheng wrote:

R2D2 wrote:

Sandhill Sunrise. M6ii + 100-400ii + 1.4x iii

Beautiful.

Thanks. A little quieter than your nice urban scenic. I see that I need to crop a little more off the bottom tho.

I do appreciate people posting cityscapes, especially since I don’t travel as much any more! Happy shooting!

R2