Have you ever tried to photograph a sunset and been disappointed with how bright and lacking in colours it is? This is because when a camera meters the light levels of a sunset it will most likely be using an evaluative metering and will want to over expose the scene.
This is how your camera will want to expose a sunset
This is the same scene manually exposed so bringing out the colour of the sunset
This sunrise was captured with an iPhone. A DSLR is not essential to capture good photos, they just help!
It is very simple to correct this depending on what you are trying to photograph but this can now include most modern smart phones. On a DSLR you either need to shoot in full manual (my preference) or use exposure compensation in shutter or aperture priority and tell the camera to under expose the photo. On modern smart phones such as on the iPhone if you touch the screen where you want to focus this will also adjust the metering. If you touch the sunset this will stop it exposing for the foreground. If you need to darken the photo further with the iphone once you have chosen your focus point you will get a yellow box appear if you swipe down with your finger this should then reduce the exposure further allowing you to capture some good sunset/sunrise photos.
Below are just a few more sunsets and sunrises to enjoy….
