Sunset view of Montreaux, Switzerland

Montreaux, a resort town in Switzerland located on the eastern shore of Lake Geneva has been a popular destination for decades. While visiting this town for a couple of days, of course I had to explore the photographic possibilities and having booked a hotel with a great view of the town, the lake and the distant mountains, I did what a really lazy photographer would do: leave the camera taking photos from the balcony of my hotel room and go for a walk along this beautiful lake :).

Luckily Fujifilm cameras have some of the best software and combining “interval shooting”, exposure bracketing with aperture priority mode (setting the aperture, in this case to f8.0 and shutter speed to automatic) can automatize the whole photo capturing process very easily. It’s still important to choose the right composition and secure the camera so it’s safe in case of a burst of wind or a curious seagull decides to play with it.

Another important detail is to start shooting at the right time. Here I started during the golden hour and left the camera all the way until night time to capture the light trails. I used 1 or 1.5 minute intervals.

Later in post the challenge is to choose the right frames. Having captured the full transition from the golden hour to sunset and blue hour it can take a while to explore and find the right moments. The photos below are taken on 2 days, a golden hour and two blue hour captures with slightly different compositions. Unfortunately there were no epic sunsets but the results are still pretty good. Which one would you choose as your favourite?

• Camera: Fuji X-T3
• Lens: Samyang 12mm f2.0 @ 12mm f8.0
• Exposure times:
  • Late blur hour: 10 seconds + extra frames for light trails
  • Early blue hour: 1.6 seconds + extra frames for light trails
  • Golden hour: 1/6 seconds.