I just love God-rays! I love that warm sunlight that bursts through the clouds and falls upon the land. To get such God-rays one has to be out when cloud cover breaks up, usually after storms. Since I lived in Hollister, California for a number of years, I know exactly where to go when storms break to maximize my chances of getting God-rays. I do not there often these days, but when I am there and there is a storm I am ready.

          I was lucky enough to be there recently just as a storm broke up. I took my gear and rushed to this spot. I just made it in time to get this scene. After a bit, the sun was lower and created some more nicely lit scenes. Here are the two images I got.

As you can see these images are difficult to expose right because of the huge difference in exposure value between the very bright parts and the dark parts of the image. Most cameras cannot take such images and retain detail in both the highlights and the dark spots. Both these images are from just one shot each; no HDR, no blending, and there is detail in the brightest and darkest spots. I just love my Sony A7R II.

          The best way to get such images exposed right is to use your historgram. Even then, you will have to learn to know your camera's sensor. You need to know how much you can recover from blown highlights and shadows because there will be clippings with images as this. With the Sony, I have learned how much of the Zebra lines to tolerate. These images had some clipped highlights, but they just disappeared with a quick adjustment of the highlights slider. I did not even have to play with the white slider.

          Since the histogram did show clippings and there was no way not to have clippings (in either the white or black side of the histogram), I had to bracket. When you are facing a scene such as this you cannot take the risk of missing it. So please bracket. Make sure you came home with a file you can work with. Most of all, you have to be out there when this happens to get the shot. Most people just stay at home because it is still cold and windy from the storm. Please get out to capture these images.