Work, life, and culture in Japan and Asia

Do not look at the sun through your lens. You may damage your eyes.

Basic gear you need:

• Tripod, remote shutter release (or use your cameras timer)
• Filters, preferably a graduated filter, either Neutral Density, or Tobacco coloured.
• In the mornings, coffee, and warm clothes (in winter)

• To show something unique, original, that others haven't done or seen before
• Not to blind yourself (looking through the camera at the sun can damage your eyes)
• Get a great / dramatic picture

• ISO: Usually, it's best to use iso100 to reduce noise.
• Aperture: About f22 Set the focus to manual, and focus to 'infinity'. Having the aperture set to F22, makes almost everything 'in focus', so if your focusing is a little off, it's all right.
• Shutter Speed: These will vary. With the sunrise samples below, I chose to use filters, hoping to slow the shutter, and blur the water. However, this seems to only work if the water is close, not a few kilometers away, like as seen below.
• Filters: Not always needed, but I chose to use a graduated filter, so the foreground is in it's natural colour, but the subject and sky are rendered more intensely, adding drama to the pictures
• White Balance: Be sure your white balance is set for the the light conditions, either 'Sunny', Sunrise / Sunset, Auto, or custom (if you know how).
• Lens: I prefer both my 75-300mm zoom and 18-70mm lenses. Often, a newer lens can bring out more colour.
• The How: The light at this time of day still wasn't bright, and in using iso100, the best speeds were quite slow, hence the need for a tripod. In the sunrises below, I set the shutter speed to over expose which seems to work better most of the time, other times setting to under expose also brought out great results. Use your preview screen to help you judge, and the camera's histogram.
• Quality Issues: Be sure there's no distractions, or unnecessary junk in the fore or backgrounds. Plan it, so everything that you see through the lens is there, because it needs to be. That includes no power lines, no garbage bins, or an unsightly McDonalds billboard or other. Include rocks and kangaroos only if they add atmosphere to the picture
• Advice: In the case of the sunrises seen below, it rose suddenly (I wasn't expecting it when it did), and it moved surprisingly quickly. Be there early, and set up early, take some early test pictures to help you better judge your shutter speed and other settings, it'll be a pain if you got there late, after going through the trouble of getting up early.
• WARNING: I chose to zoom in as much as I could, which makes it dangerous for your eyes if you look through the lens. Looks at marks at the base of the view finder to help you judge where the sun is positioned in the frame. NEVER look at the sun through a lens!
• Issues With Zooming: Also, if you zoom right in onto any object, then your camera will wobble a little from any wind, and from the shutter itself moving to to take the picture. So, I used my body to shield the camera from the wind, and held the centre part with a dead weight. However, just to see how sensitive it is, hold the tripod, look through the lens, and vary your weight of grip on the tripod; there you will see movement though the lens. So, do be careful
• Also see the composition article.
• Click on these thumbnails to see them larger:

Notice the light through the view finder

Statistical information of what I did, and how I experimented one morning. See here for more on Stats.

Click on these to view them at a larger size. Notice the time, and the varying shutter speeds.

	< Sunset near Osu, Shiga Prefecture, Japan, July 2006. F11, 1/100, iso100, 18-70mm lens at 40mm (no filters used)
	< Sunrise over Nagoya Port 24th December 2007, at 6.57am. F22, 1/5, iso100; 75-300mm lens at 300mm, Cokin P124 tobacco graduated filter, and tripod used. Notice the thirds rule being applied (see the composition article.)
	< Sunrise over Nagoya Port 24th December 2007, at 7.02am. F22, 1/6, iso100; 75-300mm lens at 110mm, Cokin P124 tobacco graduated filter (possibly a Cokin P152 Neutral Density filter, and or Cokin P160 Linear Polariser filter), and tripod used.
	< Sunrise over Nagoya Port 24th December 2007, at 7.21am. F22, 1/80, iso100; 18-70mm lens at 60mm, Cokin P124 tobacco graduated filter, and tripod used.

Also see this gallery for more examples