Friday, July 23, 2010

Playing with the new camera: Sunset on the beach

Happy Friday, everyone! It's the end of the week, so I thought I'd leave you with my recent sunset photos.

Haleiwa beach is a great place to watch the sun set over the water. I was worried that it might be a little too cloudy for good photos (sunset's less fun if you can't see the sun), but the clouds ended up being a nice addition.

These photos were taken with my camera's "sunset" scene setting, which seems to accentuate the bold colors of a sunset. I wish I'd taken a few photos without the sunset setting (sounds redundant?) to compare. I don't know exactly what it does to bring out the sunset colors. It seems like it may be cheating to use the setting, like it might be akin to lying about what the sunset actually looks like, but then I've taken photos of sunsets before and they never come out as orange or as pink or as red as I think they looked in real life. I'd say these photos capture a fair picture of the true scene.

First, a photo looking west (I guess it's southwest, more precisely) from Haleiwa before the sunset turned everything orange.


And now, the orange.


A little later.


Here's what that first angle down the coast looked like at this point. Note the paddle boarder to the left, and the light rain coming down in the distance over the water on the right. I love how the orange light catches the rain--and how it doesn't look like it's falling straight (must be blown about by the wind).


A portrait shot a little later


And sundown.


Do these seem a little bit grainy? I think these seem grainier than my other photos, but maybe it's just me. Maybe it's the sunset camera setting? I will definitely remember to try some without that setting next time.

Snorkeling photos on Monday!

10 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow, the second photo is absolutely stunning!

Yeah, the ones with the beach especially look a little grainy in the shadows. Just a bit.

Eleni said...

Well, the sand is supposed to look grainy, haha. No, I know what you mean. I guess when I play around with colors and brightness in Photoshop it starts to look grainier, so maybe the sunset camera setting is doing some of this stuff automatically and making it look grainy. I will have to experiment in the future.

And thanks!

Nathan Lurz said...

Hawaii is the best place to try out a new camera. I've always held that you can literally spin around in a circle, stop and shoot, and you'd come out with a postcard.

Eleni said...

Well I don't think most of my photos are postcard worthy. But I know what you mean: the first photo from this post (the one with the palm tree) I've always thought was sort of postcard-y, but I took it at a shopping center.

It is pretty beautiful here. I have to remind myself to appreciate it.

Vanessita said...

I like the third pic better!
They're all stunnig actually! You bought a great camera, I see no grainy photos here.

And Hawaii is such a beautiful place!

Eleni said...

Thanks! I couldn't decide which were the best--that's why I posted so many! I wish the fourth picture (with the paddleboarder and orange rain) had been framed a little better. Maybe if it had the tree in the foreground like the top photo.

Jill said...

beautiful photos! I love the beach at sunset :D
And I'm glad I'm not the only Orlando fan to be sad to hear his heart is officially taken lol.

Eleni said...

Thanks. I'll have to try getting to the East Shore for sunrise sometime.

And I'm happy to know I'm not alone, too, haha.

Sebastian Anthony said...

That's a very powerful little camera!

They're grainy because it probably sets the camera to a higher ISO. Higher ISO = more sensitivity (i.e. low-light) but more noise.

You should have a button that lets you manually change the ISO, so that you can experiment...!

Eleni said...

Ah, I noticed the "ISO" on the menu but didn't know what it was. There's an ISO Sensitivity item that allows me to choose between 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1600, but it takes away that option from the menu if I choose "Sunset" (I guess because it has a default ISO it uses for sunset). I'll have to experiment, thanks!