This short article, Handheld ISO-200 Sunrise, shares a small selection of photographs captured at Hendrie Valley early one morning. Each of the images is accompanied by a 100% crop.

I set myself a challenge that particular morning to capture all of my sunrise images handheld using ISO-200. I used an Olympus OM-D E-M1X along with an M.Zuiko PRO 7-14 mm f/2.8 zoom lens for all of the photographs featured in this article. All are shown as 100% captures without any cropping.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

As you can see from the EXIF data, the image above was captured using a shutter speed of 5 seconds. I did a bit of work in post with the shadows to very slightly lighten them up to show just a hint of leaf details in the foreground. I used the branches in the still waters of the creek as my focusing point.

As we can see in the 100% crop above, the IBIS in my E-M1X did a very good job with my 5 second handheld exposure.

As regular readers will know, I often like to push my camera gear to see what will happen. The image above was captured using the E-M1X’s Hand-held Hi Res Mode. I used the branch emerging from the water in the foreground as my focusing point. This image was captured using a shutter speed of 0.6 seconds which is one of the slowest shutter speeds I have ever used when capturing the 16 images that compose an E-M1X Hand-held Hi Res Mode image.

The 100% crop above of the Hand-held Hi Res Mode image shows very good details and an absence of ghosting. I was quite pleased with the results of this image given the relatively slow shutter speed that was used.

The photograph above was captured about 20 minutes after the first image in this article. My shooting perspective was 180-degrees away from the actual sunrise. Often we forget to look behind ourselves when photographing sunrises. The contrast is not as dramatic with this type of perspective. On the positive side, there are often far more colour nuances with which to work in post.

The 100% crop above shows the focusing point that I used for the parent image. As we can see from the handheld ISO-200 sunrise photographs in this article, using a camera or lens with very good image stabilization can extend the shooting range of our equipment.

I enjoyed challenging myself to capture these handheld ISO-200 sunrise images. Using the base ISO of our cameras is a great way to build our low light skill set. It can also help us get the best image quality out of our gear, regardless of the sensor size in our cameras.

Technical Note:
Photographs in this article were captured handheld using camera gear as per the EXIF data. All images were created from RAW files using my standard process.

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