I am currently in sunny (very, burnt to a crisp) Costa Rica and have brought the Mavic PP with me, there is a really good chance of an awesome sunset shot or two and was wondering what camera settings you guys have used before / would recommend to get a decent shot?
I generally leave the settings on auto, as 99% of the footage I have taken is landscape during the day and with the RAW’s Photoshop can sort out the little issues. I won’t be able to be this lazy with the sunset shots as the sky will have colour, the land will just be completely black.
Hi - you could use AEB to get bracketed exposures and then use HDR software or photoshop to combine the images. You should capture detail in the sunset and the land this way.
Costa Rica is on my bucket list - any tips on getting out there, where to stay and where to fly?
Cheers
Thanks for the tip, I used the AEB 5 mode which should give me some flexibility now I have 5 of them same photo
In terms of Costa Rica, I’ve ended up in the RIU Palace on the Pacific Coast, which is a lovely hotel but there isn’t much around the area other than the Diamanté Eco Park next door. But the Eco Park is awesome, has a nearly mile long zip line and loads of stuff to do. I am taking a trip tomorrow to the Arenal Volcano, then going on a Sloth lookout trip on Friday.
It is definitely one of the more green places I’ve been, they take wildlife more seriously as a large part of the country is protected land. Flying is pretty easy going, not had any trouble yet but have only done it around the hotel area. I know at the Volcano it isn’t allowed and I would guess any protected land? They have the same rules as the UK.
So I have take a few more shots, this is a preview from the flight log so it is really bad quality, but as you can see there is almost no colour in the dark area where the land is… The AEB mode has helped, as some of the photos out of the five taken are lighter in that area. I am guessing I will need to work these in Photoshop / Lightroom if I want any detail in the dark areas?
Most image editors … Photoshop or whatever … have a “Lighten Shadows” tool … that’s what you need. The RAW should still have quite a bit of detail in the shadow/land area … though that specific example still lack colours that the eye can see.
@Woolnut The important thing is that you have flown and you have taken bracketed Raw shots so you will definitely have usable data. You just have to bring in out in post processing.
Photoshop has a ‘merge to HDR Pro’ selection under File/Automate. You can load your bracketed images into this and see what it does - it will align your images, process them and then give you a variety of different effects to try.
Any one of your images can be edited the way that @OzoneVibe says - open the raw file in Photoshop Camera Raw and play with the sliders - the shadow slider in particular will bring out a lot of detail. This can be done to either the whole image or to selected areas by using the local correction tool. Hope this helps.
and have brought the Mavic PP with me, there is a really good chance of an awesome sunset shot or two and was wondering what camera settings you guys have used before / would recommend to get a decent shot?
