photomom25 Loc: chippewa lake

this picture I've altered a couple of times trying to improve it, it is dark but it was also about 5 minutes before the sun completely slid behind the trees, I wondered if I should use a different mode on my camera or if when I try to take sunset photos again should use the flash or a different mode such as portrait , I think I had it on landscape for this shot.What am I doing wrong?

tainkc Loc: Kansas City

Flash won't do you any good. Try full manual. You will have total control over everything this way. Looking at a sunset you may still get away with an aperture setting around F16 and adjust you shutter speed accordingly. If you can not get the desired results, Try bumping your ISO one setting at a time and play with the aperture so as not to introduce noise into the photo.

renomike Loc: Reno, Nevada

Waiting untill the sun was behind the trees would have given you the best sunset color, and it prevents sun over exposure, but you need clouds to really get great sunset photos. Try on a day that has beautiful clouds, I think you will like them much better.

Mike

14kphotog Loc: Marietta, Ohio

DO NOT stare at the sun through the eye piece TOO long. :evil:

nikron7 Loc: Indianapolis

I shot my sunsets and sunrises on manual. There are several things I always do in both situations
1. Use a tripod
2. Use the lowest ISO I have to maintain the most vivid colors without noise
3. Use Spot meter
4. Meter the Color part of the sky.

Variants: I have used f/22 through f/5.6 depending on what I wanted in focus. I can use my camera to make the sun dark than it is. Below are three photos, two are of the sun still not set yet

The sun is still high, I used f/8 to focus on the water while the tree(near) and the sun (far) are out of focus. I used the manual mode to darken the light.


This is ISO 100, f/5.6 with a darker exposure than on Auto.


This is the same scene as the 1st photo but a little later. I exposed this +2/3 stop than the camera metered as normal. Note the sun is still in the sky.

photomom25 Loc: chippewa lake

thanks to everyone for your suggestions I'll try something different the next time!