Why do these blasted digital cameras seem to ruin sunsets so consistently? Honestly, I would love to give you some wonderful answer to this problem, but this is something with which I have struggled much and still do not have a good answer. At best, I can give you my hunch.
When I shoot sunsets with my film camera (with slide film), I seem to always come away with stunning colors. I shot sunsets about every other day for two or three weeks with my digital camera and came away with a few “well, that’s nice” photos. Am I the only one having trouble with this? I have heard answers suggesting white balance issues, changing the speed and aperture, and so forth, but nothing seems to really solve it for me.
After days of shooting, I finally took this one. I was just happy to have some color, but unfortunately, there is nothing at all going on in this photo: no subject, no action. A friend of mine shot this next one with a digital SLR, a Nikon D40 no less, and came away with a much better shot.
This photo is great! The small f/stop gives a very large depth of field, making the foreground sand as well as the far off clouds all in focus. Plus, what my photo lacked, there is something to look at, whether the sand, the waves, the clouds, or even the far off islands. And my favorite part is the color: it has the red we want in a sunrise, but is balanced nicely with the blue in the top right. Somehow, that blue clues us in that this was the “real” color of the sunrise. It was not falsely just tinted red.
What did he do right to accomplish this? Well, luck for one, because he was asking me how he did it. I tend to shoot my white balance in auto, and later adjust the raw file to the proper white balance, but that does not work for sunsets and sunrises, it seems. He shoots with one of the set white balance settings. He asked if it was ISO, saturation, vividity, white balance, or what, but my guess is white balance.
Maybe if we all carried around a gray card (a coffee filter is close, if you are el cheapo) and set our white balance for the situation, we could walk away with these colors consistently. That is my best guess. I am still working on it.
Actually, I think your right about it being a white balance difference. I looked back at the photo and it was cloudy WB instead of my previous norm of shade WB.
That could have been the difference that really made the color of the photo “pop”. I love it. If you are shooting JPG and color correcting is too much trouble, try shooting the same scene in a few different white balance settings.