Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Beginner's Questions => Topic started by: LukeH on August 18, 2011, 12:13:16 am

Title: Sunrise Tip
Post by: LukeH on August 18, 2011, 12:13:16 am
I am doing these panoramics, and at times the sun seems to get a bit much with the glare/flare.

Any tips on how I can improve this? I'm shooting with a Canon 7d on a 10-22mm lens at 100iso, F/8 with adjusting shutter speeds.
Title: Re: Sunrise Tip
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on August 18, 2011, 12:59:38 am
You might want to try shooting a few minutes earlier, when the sun just starts appearing beneath the horizon, and use f/11 or f/16 to achieve a star effect.
Title: Re: Sunrise Tip
Post by: LukeH on August 18, 2011, 03:38:27 am
The time of day is when I want it. Star effect? Could you please explain??
Title: Re: Sunrise Tip
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on August 18, 2011, 05:33:01 am
I am doing these panoramics, and at times the sun seems to get a bit much with the glare/flare.

Any tips on how I can improve this? I'm shooting with a Canon 7d on a 10-22mm lens at 100iso, F/8 with adjusting shutter speeds.

Hi Luke,

The lens design determines most of the glare/flare potential, and the camera body the rest. So the only way to reduce it really is by choosing a lens with relatively few lens groups, with good coating. The 10-22mm zoom has 13 lens elements in 10 groups if I'm not mistaken, so a simpler optical design might help a bit. To give an idea, a 50mm f/1.4 only has 6 lens groups, and 12 air/lens surfaces produce quite a bit less glare than 20 surfaces, even with good coating.

Because you are stitching anyway, you could use a fixed (longer) focal length with fewer lens groups and shoot more tiles to still get the field of view you want. You'll probably need to do multirow stitching if you currently manage a single row stitch.

Other options require earlier time of shooting, as noted by Slobodan, or waiting for a day with more cloud cover.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: Sunrise Tip
Post by: Chairman Bill on August 18, 2011, 06:14:18 am
You might want to look at reverse ND grad filters. Singh-Ray, Lee & Hi-tech offer them.
Title: Re: Sunrise Tip
Post by: Ken Bennett on August 18, 2011, 09:39:47 am
That big blob of orange and yellow is characteristic of digital sensors when they are overwhelmed by very bright light sources. One of the things that I miss about film was how well it handled this sort of subject. Alas.
Title: Re: Sunrise Tip
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on August 18, 2011, 11:09:28 am
The time of day is when I want it.
Not sure I understand this. I was not suggesting to change the time of day, just a few minutes, or perhaps even one minute earlier.

Quote
Star effect? Could you please explain??

You can find an explanation and examples of so-called sunstars here (http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/sunstars.htm). If that is not what you want, and you do not want to shoot even a minute earlier, than I am afraid you would have to live with the ugly digital rendering of the sun, as others already pointed out. Or you can shoot film, use a prime lens known for a good flare rendering (though that only tackles the lens side of the problem, not the sensor side), or use post-processing to mitigate the effect (blurring the area around the sun, using negative Clarity, etc.)

Here is my example of a sunstar (sorry for the bad transparency scan, but just wanted to show the star effect):

P.S. Ah, yes, that was film, prime lens (Zeiss Distagon CF 50/4 for Hasselblad), f/22... any halo still visible is actually a result of (bad) scanning, not on film
Title: Re: Sunrise Tip
Post by: ErikKaffehr on August 18, 2011, 11:41:01 am
Nice Picture! Congrats!

Erik

Not sure I understand this. I was not suggesting to change the time of day, just a few minutes, or perhaps even one minute earlier.

You can find an explanation and examples of so-called sunstars here (http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/sunstars.htm). If that is not what you want, and you do not want to shoot even a minute earlier, than I am afraid you would have to live with the ugly digital rendering of the sun, as others already pointed out. Or you can shoot film, use a prime lens known for a good flare rendering (though that only tackles the lens side of the problem, not the sensor side), or use post-processing to mitigate the effect (blurring the area around the sun, using negative Clarity, etc.)

Here is my example of a sunstar (sorry for the bad transparency scan, but just wanted to show the star effect):

P.S. Ah, yes, that was film, prime lens (Zeiss Distagon CF 50/4 for Hasselblad), f/22... any halo still visible is actually a result of (bad) scanning, not on film