[icon name=”camera”]We came across this spectacular example Sony a7 sunset photography shot with a Sony a7 by photographer Richard Larssen and asked him to tell us about how he captured this shot. His answer bears out a few old maxims about photography—”arrive early, stay late” comes to mind as does “focus the mind first, then the camera.”
You can see more of Larssen’s work on his website and on his Facebook page.
Here’s what he shared with us about this excellent shot.
I come from a small town in the southwest of Norway. I use The Sony Nex-6 and the Sony A7 for my landscapes and shoot 100-percent in RAW format.
This shot is taken at Varhaug old churchyard in Rogaland. I had been wanting to get the sun “star” shown through the bullet hole in the cross for a long time but to be able to do so I had to wait for months and weeks to get it aligned right to get everything in the frame correctly.
Easter 2014 was the right time and the conditions was perfect with a lovely sunset. I grabbed my Sony A7 and Sony 24-70mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss T* lens and started shooting hand held trying to align everything. I had to take many shots to get everything right and getting the sunstar in the tiny bullet hole was actually quite hard because i had to lay on the ground while shooting and moving inches at a time. I tried different aptertures and ended up using f/16 to get the nice star effect. I could have used a lower aperture but then diffraction would have mattered even more.
For editing I used Lightroom 5 and did some basic editing while using my standard routine, starting with lens profile correction. The shot was a bit under exposed so I had to raise the shadows quite a lot and I also increased exposure by half a stop.
Next I pulled the highlights to get more of the sunstar effect shown. I then pushed the whites and pulled the blacks while holding the alt button so that nothing got blown out. Some clarity and vibrance was added while checking and changing the white balance accordingly. I also used a brush on the church and sky to get the right colors back. Finally I sharpened the photo and used noise reduction before I exported it.
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My daily shooter is Sony A1 with a vertical grip and various Sony lenses attached like the FE 20mm F1.8. Find more gear recommendations in our shop. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
