Sunset/sunrise pictures with D50 look weird

[the_borg]

Hi folk,

I have a nikon d50 SLR camera, i have tried to take some sunset and sunrise pictures, however after taking the picture i can see the the sun is leaking...

see attached image....

any ideas on what im doing wrong....

The borg

[Peakoverload]

Originally Posted by the_borg

any ideas on what im doing wrong....

Yep you are pointing your camera directly at the sun.

There are two reasons why you don't want to do this.

1. You'll get flare like you see in your photos
2. You run the risk of damaging your camera

Admittedly point 2 applies more to compacts than to DSLR's as an SLR has a mirror in the way to stop the sun cremating your sensor but even so the extremely bright light could cause problems for your camera.

If you really want to shoot sunsets with the sun in the frame try to do some or all of the following:

1. Hide the sun behind something in the scene like leaves of a tree, a person etc

2. Wait until the sun is very, very low in the sky like almost at the horizon as then it's at it's weakest

3. Use a powerful ND filter to reduce the glare but make sure that your shutter speed doesnt plummet as otherwise you'll just be exposing your sensor to the sun for longer which is even worse

HTH

[the_borg]

Thanks for the tip,

i would have assumed that this camera would be able to handle a simple photo of a sunset/sunrise, as my nikon p2 compact camera handles these pictures very well.

I am a little dissapointed as i did spend quite a bit on this camera.