Having spoken yesterday about perhaps placing my K10D and 21mm DA on permanent car duty, I was glad I had the combo in the boot yesterday for a pretty spectacular sunset. I was on my way back to work halfway through my shift when I saw what was developing. The priority was to give myself a clear view of the sky so I drove up to the top of the Dundee Law ("law", in this case, meaning "hill").
It's an extinct volcano more or less right in the middle of the city and offers a wonderful panorama of the skyline and the hills of Fife across the River Tay. When I got there, I found three other photographers had already beaten me to it - and they had tripods! Still, the handrail on the parapet that encircles part of the summit is quite wide and flat so I was able to balance the K10D on that and use the self-timer to trip the shutter.
I could really have done with a longer lens as the 21mm, as wide angles tend to do when used like this, reduced everything to tiny proportions. Still, it will give you a flavour of the scene which was much more dramatic than the pic is able to show. If you look at the full image (by clicking on it) you'll see that the yellow tones in the sky have clipped a little and are pretty featureless. I've found that the intense brightness that often accompanies a sunset can be too much for a DSLR. A colour print or slide film may have captured the sky more accurately but, in the case of the slide film, at the expense of shadow detail. I have another few frames that had less generous exposure and I should be able to clone in some details from the same part of the sky to improve matters.
The dark mound on the right of the picture is Balgay Hill which is an ancient plug that erupted from the volcano many moons ago. The expanse of water is the Tay and the stretch that figures in the pic is Invergowrie Bay. Last night, I looked out my D700 and 28-105mm Nikkor just in case there's a repeat performance of nature's light show. Peering out of the window at 2.50 p.m., it's looking quite promising!
2 comments:
Bruce,
I thought you dropped off the Pentax world. I'm glad to see you back. I understand your previous move to the Nikon D700. I's a great camera. I still post your stuff when you write.
Best Regards,
Yvon Bourque
I like that shot, never got a sunset like that in 2.5 years in Aberdeen!!!!!!!
I think that in this case having a few areas without detail is OK, the overall exposure is fine, and the detail is pretty darn good. Maybe a little noise reduction (Neat Image or Noise Ninja) but a beautiful shot!!
Lloyd
www.lloydshell.blogspot.com
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