Sunrise Over the Ramon Crater, and some Photo Stacking advice

October 02, 2014  •  Leave a Comment

 My wife and I have spent last weekend in Mitzpe Ramon - a small town on the edge of the beautiful Ramon Crater. And so, I finally got my opportunity for photographing the crater at sunrise. 

 The Ramon Crater is located in the middle of the Israeli desert - the Negev - a good 2 hours drive from the center of the country. The crater is probably one of the most unique landscape types in Israel, and as far as I concern - it fairly challenges other well-known desert parks such as Death Valley or the Grand Canyon views. In addition, it's probably one of the best places in Israel to watch the sunrise. The cliff-edge promenade provides a beautiful sunrise view - so you don't even have to put a serious effort to get there... And at this time of year - the sun rises just in front of you - classic for a good photo.

 After I set the gear up for the sunrise shot, I waited and took a few shots in the meantime, during the blue hour. The weather was unusual - to say the least. The humidity was high at 90%, and it was close to the dew point - which meant light fog. I wasn't worried about the tiny drops that appeared on top of the lens, but just as the sun rose - it hit me: if it's on the top of the lens - it must be on the glass too... Luckily a quick wipe solved the issue - and I did manage to get that shot (otherwise a whole too-early morning would have been wasted...).

 I usually prefer having several exposures over using filters in the field. It's not always easy to combine - as clouds and other objects are moving - but usually you can manage - and you get much more flexibility. Filters have a fixed value - which means you'll probably end up with a sky that's too dark or too bright, or with a bag full of filters - if you insist on getting that done right...

 So for both sunrise shots, I used about 12 exposures, that were meant to be properly combined in post-processing. Here's why:

  • Each exposure was bracketed 3 times, as the sun is very bright compared to its surroundings, and the shadows on the rocks were quite dark.
  • The focus had to be bracketed as well, as the rocks were extremely close, and the landscape was at infinity. So that's twice the images.
  • In addition, I wanted to get a "starry" sun using a closed aperture, but this blurs out the entire image. So that had to be a separate set of images as well...
  • And again, the focus was bracketed for that too - just in case a ray decides to shine on the rocks...

 

In the end, I didn't have to use all these images, since the initial exposure setting proved good enough. You can get the impression by visiting the Ramon Crater gallery.

 

 


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