Need help with sunset photos.

[SMcEvoy]

Help! One of my favourite pastimes is taking sunset photos with my SLR. I'm not finding it as easy with my Minolta Dimage Z1. I finally got colours right, but it appears really grainy. Do I need to have it on the highest resolution for taking sunsets? I've got it on a manual focus of infinity, and the sunset white balance setting built into the camera. Any suggestions?

[JCW3]

The biggest thing when taking a sunset is getting a good metering. Not really sure how you have your camera setup, but most cameras default to matrix metering. This is fine if you watch, but many times it wants to Over/Under expose the image depending on the composition.

One thing you can do is spot meter a neutral item or spot meter the neutral clouds off to the side of the sunset, but this is more a personal choice.

The Z1 is a fairly noisy (digital grain) camera, but with a few manual adjustments you can aid the issue alot.

I would recommend going in and locking your ISO at your lowest setting, such as ISO 100, this will aid your noise issue A LOT. Many times the camera picks a higher setting which results in more NOISE.

The big thing now is, at ISO 100 your going to have a slower shutter speed, so make sure you can hand hold it, if not get a tripod or some support.

As for your WB, the sunset setting usually works, but many times you have to experiment. If you have a manual WB then use that, but if not you will just have to experiment to see what matches the setting at the moment, but usually Sunset WB will work.

Manual focus to infinity will work fine, but watch many cameras actually focus BEYOND INFINITY, which will results in a odd soft focus.

My guess is your camea ISO is set to auto and its selecting settings such as 200 or 400 instead of the cleaner 100. I looked in your gallery, but did not see it. If you post it we then can see what settings you are useing and may be able to spot your problem.

[SMcEvoy]

Thanks for the really helpful comments - I'll be heading back to the manual. Try my gallery now - there should be one there called Calgary Sunset - unless I've completely missed and posted it somewhere into oblivion. However I can find it by searching username 'smcevoy'.

[JCW3]

I found the photo with no problems, the only thing is you have stripped all the exif data away in your post processing or web reduceing.

Without the exif data, not much can be known. But nice cloud textures.