Redondo Pier
Redondo Pier, originally uploaded by tomscy2000.
Time for another picture review. I was at the Redondo Pier at sunset early February of this year and thought I could get some nice sunset shots. When I first shot this, I wasn’t really into it. It might’ve been because the camera simply couldn’t get all the color in the sunset. The pixel depth of the S3 IS is only 8-bits, and the camera cannot shoot in RAW. Thus, the dynamic range of the scene simply could not be captured accurately. Additionally, because any shots over ISO100 on this camera are nasty, my shutter speed was restricted to 1/6 of a second at f/5.6. Luckily, the S3 has some relaible image stabilization.
The original shot was a bit bland. The sky was muddy, and thus I chose to pull up the shadows to make the pink/maroon sunset come through. However, this resulted in blowing out the highlights. HDR would’ve helped immensely for this shot. The only redeeming part is that blowing out the highlights actually improved the uniformity of the shot, with the white part being largely a horizontal portion on top, not really affecting the important parts of the shot, such as the pier and the water. The upper right corner shows some un-blown out portions of the sky due to slight vignetting, which in hindsight I probably should’ve painted over in white.
I was quite surprised when multiple people told me they really liked this shot. I guess I was worried too much about the technical aspects and afraid people would wonder about why the sky was so white, but the natural beauty of this scene really saved it. The water was deep blue and sparkling that day, and the purple cast was gorgeous, serving as a great backdrop over the silhouetted pier.
I’d imagine taking this same shot again with my 40D and bracketed from -2 to +2 EV would significantly improve the quality of this shot, from sharpness to color gradation to dynamic range.
Focal Length: 6mm (36mm Full-Frame FOV)
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter: 1/6 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure: Manual
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