What camera for pictures of sunsets?

I play a lot of golf and want to take pictures of the beautiful sunsets I see! But my iPhone won't capture all the different colors and clouds, it just doesn't do it justice ever. How nice of a camera do you have to get to take a high def photo that will capture the scene you saw?

High Def refers to video. If you want clean, sharp sunsets you need a camera that is fully adjustable, which means you will have to learn how to take these images, not let the camera do it for you. A DSLR would be the first choice, but a bridge camera would be a step between a point and shoot (which are rarely adjustable) and DSLR.

What you need to be able to do is expose for the sky and the ground. The dynamic range for your camera, and DSLRs is too small to capture what your eyes are seeing. Essentially, you want an HDR photo, or at least reduce the dynamic range in your image. Here's some different scenarios and what you'll need.

HDR - CAMERA
- Canon 5D Mark III, or other camera that takes and processes HDR images.
- Tripod

Place the camera on the tripod, set the camera to HDR capture mode, adjust your expose and take the image. The camera will take multiple images and create one HDR image.

HDR - POST PROCESSING
- Any DSLR, point and shoot, or phone where you can change manually adjust the exposure.
- Tripod
- Photoshop, Photomatix, GIMP, other HDR creation software.

Set the camera on the tripod and take a least three images (-, 0, +). One image should be under exposed so that the sky is properly exposed (ground too dark). One image should be over exposed so that the ground is properly exposed (sky blown out). One image should be a middle exposure between the sky and the ground. If three is not enough, then consider taking seven images where the exposure in each image differs by one stop of light and your combined set of images capture the details in the sky with clouds and the ground with trees. Very important; your camera should stay in the same position for all images. Once you have all your images, load them into your HDR software and use it to create an HDR image. Photomatix is very popular for creating HDR images, so I'd recommend trying that one first.

DYNAMIC RANGE COMPRESSION
- Camera
- Tripod
- Graduated and Filter (hard or soft depending on the horizon)

Selecting the right and filter will depend on the difference in light (measured in stops) between the sky and the ground. However, you don't want the and filter to be so dark that the exposure is the same for the sky and the ground. Its natural for the sky to be brighter than the ground. Set the camera on the tripod, use dark part of the and filter to cover the sky and have the clear part cover the ground. This will reduce the exposure in the sky so that you can take a single picture and have all the details in one shot. This method, when possible, overcomes the issue of movement in a scene when using multiple images to create an HDR image, plus you get instant feedback in terms of how the image will look. I'm planning to get some hard and soft grad and filters myself since I like taking outdoor portraits.

A DSLR would be the easiest way to go unless your point and shoot camera or cellphone has HDR built in.

Find the -2 button. Almost every camera above $30 has it.

Sunsets are misleading because you have to recognize the limits of the camera. The sky is way to bright and the ground is way too dark, so the computer decides to meet in the middle where noone is satisfied. The Exposure Value Compensation feature is a simple, old, button that tells the camera to be 1 or 2 steps darker than it thinks it should be. You are telling the camera that you are smarter than it and you believe the dark ground doesn't matter so lets make the right exposure for the bright sky, by making it darker.

The answer about exposure compensation is correct- but also, most good sunset landscape shots are done using a graduated or reverse graduated neutral density filter. What this does is the same as the dark strip on your car windshield- it holds back the sun to allow the foreground to be seen.

Essentially it balances the difference between the darker land or water, and the very bright sky you're shooting towards. We can see this correctly, but a camera has far less dynamic range which is why the sky will be too bright and the ground too dark in sunset shots.