Sunset:

Film: Fujichrome ISO 50 Velvia. Pentax LX. 120-600mm Vivitar zoom+2X converter on tripod. Shot near Birmingham AL after a rainstorm. Direct exposure reading was obtained using an off-camera Pentax digital spotmeter from the medium gray area between two cloud layers above the sun. The final exposure was 1/60 @ f-11/16, with 11/16 being the approx. effective aperture of the lens wide open with a 2x converter.

-- Bahman Farzad (cpgbooks@mindspring.com), December 03, 1998

Answers

Impresive, not sure how you get the colors you do with Velvia but they always look good.

-- Tait Stangl (taits@usa.net), December 03, 1998.

Looks like a jack'o'lantern, at least one in my nightmares. Interesting shot!

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), December 03, 1998.

Nice composition and a very dramatic sunset(?). I imagine things were changing rapidly and you had a fleeting moment to capture it. Probably a tough one to scan as well.

-- Mike Green (mgprod@mindspring.com), December 04, 1998.

I think the exposure is too dark. Did you bracket to see other alternatives?

-- Larry Korhnak (lvk@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu), December 04, 1998.

Larry I think the exposure is what makes the photo, sure a little detail in the clouds could have helped, but still a good photo.

-- Tait Stangl (taits@usa.net), December 04, 1998.

Thanks for your comments. I try to answer most of your questions: 1) This was a very colorful sunset and you are right, it was a very difficult image to scan. I simply have problems with scanning my lowlight tones even with contrast setting at its lowest level (I use an ultra-slow Nikon Coolscan scanner). The screen-projected original has more details and clouds are not black and is more eye-catching. 2) The only reason most of my Velvia shots look colorful is that I choose subjects that have vibrant/saturated colors. These include this sunset as well as backlighted flowers and leaves. 3) I do not have a brighter image since I did not have scanning and showing the image on the net on my mind when I shot the picture. As far as bracketing goes I used the "spray and pray" exposure technique for the first 25 years of my photographic life. For better or worse, once I understood how my equipment (meter/spotmeter) worked and I knew my film (now I buy 2 to 3 100-ft rolls of Velvia at a time and freeze them), and my processing lab, I gave up the habitual bracketing technique (?) in 1978. Having said that, however, once in a while I miss some of the crazy shots I used to get when I was bracketing and did not know what I was doing! 4) The jack'o'lantern angle for this image is a new one on me!

-- Bahman Farzad (cpgbooks@mindspring.com), December 04, 1998.