Taking good ocean shots

[Alan]

I've been taking quite a few ocean shots lately usually in the evening but I can't get a decent shot with the bright glare caused by the reflection of sunlight from various surfaces. I basically now use the "Beach" setting on A720 and hope for the best

For example

 

[bwana]

You can get polarising filters for many p&s cameras. Otherwise under expose it a bit - which is perhaps what the beach setting does?

Third option - grab a beer and just enjoy the sunset

 

[ldmelsa]

move your cam away from the glare, or put your hand over the glare, and lock the exposure
recompose your shot and take it
if you would like it warmer or cooler, change your WB

 

[Morpheos]

I would try a polarising filter, or maybe wait for a few clouds to soften the sun as it sets behind the mountians.
Just an idea.

 

[Rouxenator]

If you want the full range of light in your picture the best would be to take three shots at different exposures and then tone map them over each other. You can get software that does the tone mapping for you.

See if your camera has an Exposure Bracketing mode for shooting and then play around with that.

 

[Alan]

 

[Pixual]

If you have a local library go and borrow a few books on photography. Or join a good photography forum that caters for beginners.

If you are shooting into a bright light source such as the setting sun over the ocean, your camera will shift exposure to try and turn that bright part of the scene into an 18% grey area. This invariably causes the rest of the scene to be under-exposed, which may not be what you are trying to accomplish, so you can compensate for this by using the + compensation, which over-rides the camera meter by however many stops you need it to.

Then again if you don't want to blow out the highlights you don't want to compensate too much, so a trick is to "bracket" about 7 different stops of exposure and then blend them in an editing program to retain both highlights and shadows.

High contrast scenes will always fool even the most advanced cameras. It's the photographer who needs to do the thinking in those situations. Of course it helps to have a DSLR with a high dynamic range like the Nikon D3/700.