Sun Star

While in Puerto Vallarta in February I went out by the pool at my hotel before sunset to get a "sun star" shot.

I picked a point of view that would allow me to frame the setting sun between back lit, silhouetted palm trees and have the middle ground reflected in the surface of the pool. I also liked the diagonal leading lines on both sides of the frame.

Shooting from a tripod with a Canon 5D Mark II camera and an EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS USM lens, I set the focal length to 24 mm. With image stabilization and auto-focus turned off and the camera in manual exposure mode, I set the ISO to 400, the aperture to f/22, the subject focus to about 2 meters, and the exposure to -2/3 at 1/15 sec. To help assure a tack sharp image, I tripped the shutter with a cable release.

Post processing was done in CS4.

-CGTTL