Fine tune your Canon DSLR to avoid washed-out colours

There is something truly magical about the warm glow of shooting sunrise or sunset photography. The gloriously intense colours often inspire photographers to pick up their cameras, but how many times of you been disappointed by your results?

And have you been left wondering what happened to the vibrant colours that inspired you to shoot sunrise and sunset photography in the first place?

Shoot sunset photography with perfect colours

Does this happen to you?

You’re not alone. This is a common problem in sunset photography, but one that is easy enough to put right.

Here  are three ways to make sure your pictures pack a colourful punch the next time you attempt to shoot sunrise or sunset photography!

01 Optimise your exposure
A lack of vibrancy in your pictures can often be due to over-exposure, which results in washed-out colours. To combat this, take a meter reading from the sky, excluding the sun itself and anything in the foreground.

02 Warm up your shots
Adjust white balance manually using your camera’s presets, or for more control use the Kelvin (k) setting to select a colour temperature of between 6,000 and 7,000k. If you shoot in raw, this can be done during processing.

03 Add vibrancy
If you’re a JPEG shooter, the vibrancy can be increased by selecting the Vivid or Landscape Picture Style. To rescue an insipid shot, use the Saturation and Vibrance sliders in Adobe Camera Raw or Photoshop Lightroom.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2012 at 7:00 am and is filed under Landscapes, Photography Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.