Sun's rays through clouds

Travelling to work last week, the sun's rays were coming through the clouds and highlighting a local hill. Only having

my mobile with me (Samsung G600 5.0mp camera (are they really equal to proper 5.0mp cameras?)) I tried

capturing it. Having downloaded the image onto my computer the rays hardly show at all. Instead there is a

somewhat overexposed section at the base of the clouds with a dark foreground and remaining areas of cloud. This

begs a few questions: (i) am I flogging a dead horse trying to take this kind of shot with a camera phone? (ii) are

there any settings that I could have changed whilst taking the shot? (iii) is there any way of teasing out the rays

using photoshop cs3 which I have just got and am a complete beginner with? I don't want to go down the whole

creating false rays path but rather getting the shot right in the first place. I do have a minolta dimage Z3 and 35mm

minolta 5000 and 7000 film cameras with various lenses.

Any help or suggestions gratefully received. Thanks in advance,

Jon

Hi, HDR makes this sun rays to jump out from the picture, if you don't have a digital camera, but you are pretty sure that spending 3 pictures to make only one, use a tripod, take 3 photos under different exposures. Then download photomatix 5 and follow the steps there to create a HDR. You may also buy a filter, I guess polarizing filter will help you a little bit.

Hope this helps you. Noel.

I think it is usually best to underexpose the scene in these instances to get the most out of the picture. You

may still have some detail there, even if you don't see it. If you are using Camra Raw or Lightroom, try reducing

the exposure in the raw settings (you can set photoshop to open jpg files in Camera Raw), perhaps increase

contrast, change the brightness, or whatever you need to get the results you want. Of course, if the exposure is

far off, there's not much you can do.<div></div>

You can use PhotoShop to create light rays if you select the area of the sunbeam with a polygonal lasso tool with a fairly generous feather, say, 20 or 30 depending upon the resolution in pixels of the image you are working with. The higher the resolution, the more generous the feather needs to be. When the area is selected go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast and increase the brightness. Voila! You have sunbeams!

You might find it useful to hide the selection edges (View > Show > Selection Edges) when you do this.<div></div>

Thanks Noel. Unfortunately I only took one at the time but next time I will certainly try taking 3. Even with my mobile phone camera I can change the exposure setting. I suppose the answer is to always have my 'proper' camera with me.

Thanks Oliver. Your suggestion of under exposing is helpful. Does the fact that there was quite a lot of dark tones in the foreground and sky alter my chances of getting the rays? or do I need to zoom in more?

Thanks Steve but for the moment I want to concentrate on getting my photo-taking skills correct rather than having to rely on post-shot playing.

Jon