gessman Loc: Colorado

I'm convinced that you wouldn't want us all to bare with you - there'd be way more wrinkles than anyone would want to see. With that behind us, so to speak, I am late in responding because I wanted to see if anyone would give you a complete immediate solution that would allow you to come away with at least one good pic now as you prepare to undergo all the future enlightenment that has been recommended and while several folks came close, as I perceive it, what you need is some complete plain English if I may, Ms Garza. I may repeat some things already said - forgive me if that happens.

So as to get some perspective in your shot, try to shoot through a clearing between a couple of bushes or trees where there'll be some limbs with leaves framing the sun but leaving the view of the sun mostly unobstructed and possibly sorta toward one side about 1/3 of the way from either side and 1/3 of the way either down from the top or up from the bottom. Perspective is good as is not centering your main subject. Be sure to use a remote release or the timer feature on your camera just to avoid blurry shots from camera shake.

Set your mode dial on "M" for manual. Set your ISO on 100 and shutter speed on 1/125th. Set your aperture as wide open as it will go like f/2.8 or whatever is lowest. Take a shot and move the aperture to the next setting like f/4, then to f/5.6, then f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22 or further if you have a lens that goes higher. Somewhere in the group of 7 or 8 shots you will have a shot that will be about as close to "perfect" as you're going to get without a lot of study of the finer points of how to maximum the quality of such a shot. Pick your winner and go with it until you have time to avail yourself of all the enlightenment you've been given about books to read and special techniques like hdr to follow, etc.

Most likely, your shots at each end of the aperture spectrum will be unusable but by covering the entire spectrum you will get a variety of exposures from which to choose. With digital cameras there are setting in between the natural f/# I suggested you use above depending on how your camera is set up. Many cameras come set up to shoot in 1/3 interval to the numbers I suggested above. If you are familiar enough with that fact and desire to, you can also take a shot at those intermediate numbers, bearing in mind that you'd get almost 3 times as many shots, and that might give you an even better shot out of the bunch than by sticking to what I suggested which is indeed an overkill either way but unless my thinking is muddled, if you get a shot at every aperture available and there's no other reasonable combinations of settings left then you'll have a shot in the bunch that will come close to being as good as it'll get. That would be "bracketing" at its worst but it costs nothing to do that other than a little wear and tear on your camera - not enough to hurt.

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@mgarza [et al]

The screen shot of your LCD monitor looks indicates
you shot RAW. So quite possibly you can extract the
image you desire from the raw file.

The one thing you you will verrrry likely not be able
to recover is your personal impression of the sun as
a red ball. Red, yellow, or white to the eye, the sun
is waaaaay brighter than anything else in any photo
of any scene anywhere anytime [on earth anyway].

The exposure that can record the sun as red will not
record anything else in the scene. All else will reflect
far to little light to form an image if the exposure is
set to allow the sun itself to render as a colorful disk.

Typically if you need the sun color to look as you wish
you'd clone some color from the clouds into the white
disk of the sun in your image.

Some other suns [stars] also have color [for reasons
other than affect a sunset], but have you seen much
color in star-field images ? NASA has some, but your
ordinary photo gear won't render red stars as red.

OTOH you CAN render Mars red, especially this very
night. Best days in the 30 year cycle are right now if
you wanna try it. Difference vs images of the sun is
that Mars is a sunlit object and not the sun itself. It's
same with the moon.

In the photo below note the sunspots. Those spots
are NOT dark. They are very bright ... brighter than
an arc welding flame. Ever try looking thru welder's
goggles ? You can't see anything, they're so close to
opaque you can watch an eclipse without harm. Sun
spots look black in photos cuz the exposure is set to
show the color of the sun. That's what you are up
against shooting sunsets. If you wanna catch the
colorful scene, the sun will be blown out. Don't ask
why you see the sun as red in the real world scene.
Enter med school and ask your professor :-)

catchlight.. Loc: Wisconsin USA- Halden Norway

Yes indeed... A digital painter ;)

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Many meters can't even read any subject of the sun's
brightness. No reason to read anything brighter than
a beach and ocean at noon on the equator, because
no brighter scenes will occur. Despite the "no reason"
idea, any meter will go a few stops beyond that, just
for a margin of error. The sun itself is waaaay beyond
even that margin of error.

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So true. Finished images are expressions, not documents.

The camera has not yet been built that will, in one single
exposure, produce a SOOC playback/document that has
more than passing resemblance to what a human viewer
of the original scene was perceiving at the time.

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