A holiday weekend combined with an early closure of the office meant I had a bit of time to experiment with some things I wanted to try on the new cameras.  Normally I don’t want to blow out a whole evening at a weekend but, with a bit of extra time, I decided to see what I could do with shooting aircraft in sunset and really low light conditions.  There will be some other posts that look a how the cameras do in very low light/night conditions.  However, to get there, I also got some sunset to play with.

At this time of year, sunset is not as good as it will be later.   The sun goes too far north late in the day so, instead of getting good light on the jets, you end up with some backlighting.  Even so, there are some good chances to get some more delicate light on the planes.  You do get a bit too much contrast as the remaining light is on the nose and the fuselage sides are pretty shady but you can get some reasonable results.

I was interested to see how the camera dealt with the light.  The use of exposure compensation becomes a bit variable in these conditions.  The light starts to get nicely balanced but then you can end up with more brightness in the background with less on the subject.  This can make things go a little dark.  I found myself playing with the settings quite a bit as I explored how the camera reacted.