Shooting Sunsets
 

I hope this question hasnt been asked a million times already. I searched and came up empty...

I've been trying to shoot a sunset behind a series of Army tents (using a Sony V1) for the closing of a project I'm working on.

First Try: On manual settings I couldn't find a decent balance with the iris. Open too much, the sun is blarring and tents were too dark. Open not enough, the tents were way way too dark. No happy medium.

Second Try: I'm not big on Auto settings, but I thought I'd try. On auto the camera sees the sun, compensates for it, and the tents completely dark. Then the sun goes down, and of course the auto iris brightens the sky & tents brighter than when the sun was up.

Also... on a sunset, your'e talk'n about three or four different lighting conditions. So, how do you do this in real-time? Obviously, the setting you start out with isnt going to work when the sun is almost down (you know, ND1 & ND2).

Any suggestions much appreciated.

PS, I'm using time lapse.

I haven't done timelapse sunsets, but I'm guessing at least part of your answer may be with gradual ND filters. You may also want to look into using reflectors on your foreground subjects. The advantage of reflectors is that they dim along with the sun.

wacky idea, but if you're on tripod, shoot two passes, exposing one for forground, and one for the sunset background and combine in post? Obvioulsy this won't work if there's foreground motion, but if there's not, it might allow you to pull it off.

Ive shot a few sunsets and I found using the sunset pre-set on the V1e helped a lot with the exposure and colour balance.