Are those yours? *www.americandetectorist.com/forum/images/smilies/mysmilies/shocked03.gif
Yes.
@
raja the 1st one is matching..but not the 2nd one
If you look at the luminence histogram of that image (sunrise) you can see why it doesn't have many of the issues you encountered: it has a rather narrow dynamic range. The unclipped portion of the sun is approximately in the middle of the histogram, and most of the histogram peaks long before the highlight end. The foreground registers as a spike a little way from the shadow end, but the bulk of the image is middle to middle-right. Getting the sun in the middle of the histogram is possible only when its direct light is very low, such as when it is just peeking over the horizon, and its light is also lighting up the sky with close to the same intensity. There should be no visible clouds near the horizon or the sun's light will diffuse and you will lose the disk. Same applies for dust and pollution so shooting over the sea gives you an advantage if you are in a city. If there are clouds above you they can reflect sunlight onto the foreground and narrow the dynamic range even more.
To shoot that sunrise I walked every morning by the beach and timed the sun. From the time I saw the top edge of the sun appearing over the horizon to the time the bottom edge clears the horizon was less than 4 minutes. It's a narrow window but at least I didn't have to hang around long. Once the sun crosses the window it rapidly brightens and in just a matter of minutes it is one large diffused blown out highlight in the sky. How quickly the sun climbs the sky depends on your latitude I think, so you might have more time and more friendly light further away from the equator.
I obviously tried several times. I got a nice series of shots in January sometime after the rains ended when the air was clear, crisp, and cool and the beach was deserted. I guess a similar procedure in reverse should work for sunsets but I've never tried that as I'm on the east coast and cannot shoot over the ocean.
