How can I photograph a sunrise with both a colorful sky and a visible foreground?
Asked 8/11/2020
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I’m new to camera settings and shooting sunrise scenes. On my Autel Evo 2 drone, if I use auto settings I get nice sky color but the foreground becomes very dark. If I change settings to brighten the ground, the sky gets washed out or turns white. How can I capture both the sunrise colors and the foreground more like I see it with my eyes? Is there a setting or shooting method that helps?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
5y ago
2 Answers
6
Your question covers several aspects; I will try to answer them here.
Your two problems are:
The Sky is missing vibrant colors
The foreground is too dark, almost black
Let's start with the first problem. It is common for Out-of-camera sunrise or sunset photos not to look very colorful. This is because fo white balance. Basically, WB determines how warm or cold the colors are in your photo. This problem can be overcome by either
a) Setting White Balance manual before taking the photo - usually, a value of something between 6000-9000K is good (try the "Cloudy" Preset of your camera).
b) If your camera supports this, shoot Raw (the Autel Evo 2 can shoot Raw). In any Raw editing software such as Lightroom (a free alternative would be Darktable or RawTherapee), you can change the WB setting without quality loss.
So now to the second problem. Here, the problem is dynamic range. In a simple explanation, a camera's dynamic range is the brightness difference the camera can capture before some areas will be blown out (white) or black.
Think of it like this: Let's suppose you want to take a photo of the moon with some background stars. As we know, the moon is very bright. The stars in the background are very dim. So you can either expose for the moon - then it will show details (like craters), but the stars won't be visible. Or you can try to expose for the stars - then, the moon will be just a white circle. You can't have both in detail.
The same is true for sunsets - you have a bright sky and dark foreground. The reason you can see both in detail is because the human eye can see up to 24 stops of dynamic range (at least, this is what we think we see; the image is only constructed in our brains - see here for more information).
Most photo cameras only have a dynamic range of about 10-14 stops (not really related, but cinema cameras can have up to 17 stops of DR - one of the reasons they are so expensive). So how can this be solved?
Shoot raw! RAW formats are uncompressed, which means that they contain all the information that was captured (unlike jpegs which are compressed). In post-production, you can increase the brightness value for the shadows and decrease the brighntess value for the highlights.
In some situations, you will find that even shooting RAW will keep some reagions completely black ore white. You can check this by looking at the histogramm:
(Source)
In this case, you need to shoot an HDR image. Basically, you take multiple photos with different exposures and merge them together in software such as Lightroom - from each image, the area where the exposure is good is taken and combined to a final image. Read more about HDR here.
- If you don't want to shoot RAW (although I highly recommend it), many cameras have a built-in HDR function where the camera automatically takes two or more images and merges them.
TL;DR: Shoot Raw. If necessary, take multiple exposures and combine them to an HDR photo. In post-production, increase shadows and decrease highlights. Set the white balance to your liking.
If you don't want to shoot Raw, use the camera's built-in HDR function and set your white balance to something like the "Cloudy" preset.
Originally by user91372. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user91372
5y ago
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Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
What you’re seeing is normal: the sunrise sky is much brighter than the land, so the scene can exceed the camera’s dynamic range. A single normal exposure often forces a choice between a colorful sky or a brighter foreground.
Try these steps:
- Use HDR mode on the drone if available. That’s specifically meant to hold detail in both bright and dark areas.
- Shoot RAW if your drone supports it. RAW gives you much more flexibility to recover highlights and lift shadows later.
- Set white balance manually instead of leaving it on auto. A warmer setting—often around 6000–9000K, or the Cloudy preset—can help preserve the sunrise colors.
- In manual exposure, you’ll usually need to prioritize the sky slightly to avoid blowing it out, then brighten shadows later if shooting RAW.
If brightening the foreground makes the sky turn white, that means highlights are clipping. If exposing for the sky makes the ground black, that means the scene contrast is too high for a normal single shot. HDR and RAW are the best solutions here.
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