Recently we had the pleasure of co-leading a NANPA (North American Nature Photography Association) field trip to the Salton Sea in southern California, an activity held in conjunction with NANPA's annual conference. Our focus, for the field trip, was snow geese, and we filmed birds at both sunrise and sunset which leads to this month's tip.
Our morning shoot was aimed directly east towards the rising
sun. In the first light of dawn geese periodically lifted from
a nearby pond, offering silhouettes against the increasingly brightening
sky. Metering for pre-sunrise skies is easy, as we simply meter
the bright orange sky and overexpose by about one stop. This accomplishes
two things:
1. Since meters read for middle tone or gray, purposefully over-exposing
by one stop restores a sense of brightness to the sky, rather
than the rather dull, mid-tone sky we'd otherwise have.
2. Over-exposing also pushes the histogram to the right, which
maximizes the amount of data in the scene.
Although the exposure changes slightly as the minutes pass, as the sun creeps higher and higher toward the horizon line, metering and composing remains fairly simply, since the bright sky isn't painful, or dangerous, to look at. However, once the sun crests the horizon the situation changes dramatically, especially in the humidity-free atmosphere of southern California.
As the sun climbs higher into the sky the exposure changes rather dramatically, requiring either shutting down the aperture or using a faster shutter speed, or both, to keep the proper exposure. Looking through your viewfinder to do so can be dangerous, especially if you're using a long telephoto (most of the field trip participants were using 500mm lenses) as the bright sun, if in the field of view, is magnified and aimed straight into your eye.
We were shooting geese as they rose from their overnight roosting pond, and we wanted to frame the geese against the sky and the rising sun. Obviously, the sun created a major problem, as a bright sun magnified through a telephoto lens can do serious damage to your eyes. At the very least, you'll see spots for several minutes until, no doubt, your mind adjusts for the ruined rods and cones you've just destroyed and fills in the visual gap, removing the spot.
Here's how we handle this problem, not just for snow geese at the Salton Sea but also for sunrises, or sunsets, virtually anywhere when we're using a telephoto. We use the camera's LCD monitor to frame the image, and expose based upon that view. To do so, we first 'roughly' frame the scene with our eye to the viewfinder, but keeping the sun out of the image. After taking our eye from the viewfinder we move the camera/lens into the approximate position where the sun will be inside the frame.
You can have a pretty good idea that the sun is indeed in the frame if you simply hold your hand a few inches from the viewfinder. As you move the camera - I am assuming you are using a tripod, of course! - a bright rectangle will appear on your hand when the sun is framed. This is a trick used by folks wishing to align a solar-eclipse viewing box, by the way.
We use a Wimberley Gimbal head when we're using our telephotos, so it is extremely easy to position our lens in this way. Since the horizon line, and the framing, can be set via the up/down action of the head, all we need do is rotate the pan action to place the sun within the frame. You could accomplish the same thing with a ballhead, provided the ballhead has a pan feature. In that case, position the rig for the horizon, lock the ball, and then rotate, on axis, via the pan feature.
When you think you have the sun in the frame, snap a picture. Check the LCD monitor and adjust accordingly. As the sun rises the exposure will change, but you can fine tune that exposure as well by simply consulting the LCD monitor.
For the snow geese, we shot clouds of geese rising skyward, and some returning as well, by simply watching the sky with our naked eyes, and snapping a shot when we thought birds were within the frame. To achieve sharp focus on the birds I first focused on flocks of birds that flying by, near the sun but without having the sun in my field of view. At the distances involved 1/1000th sec. was sufficiently fast to freeze the birds, so I had plenty of depth of field when I set the ISO to 400.
One final trick. Looking at a sunrise in the desert, even naked
eye, can be dangerous, so to protect my eyes I extended my arm
and raised my thumb as an effective sun-block. My thumb blocked
the sun but still gave me a great view of the surrounding sky
so that I could snap images whenever I thought geese were within
the frame. Sure, I missed some shots, but not many, and even more
importantly, I didn't risk any damage to my eyes!
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