Camera Meter

I was in Westminster early in the morning recently. How early? The sun wasn't up yet.
Anyways, it reminded me of two items. The first is when you get a picture in your head, don't give up when it's not there. There could be something better.
The other lesson is not to always trust the camera meter. Take some chances.
I saw the first light of day and the shade of color in the sky and reached for my camera.
I always have gotten up early and there are a lot of photographs in morning and make it worth getting out of bed.
In my mind I saw the sun rising over Westminster. Well there were clouds where the sun would come up.
My disappointment turned into joy real fast. There were many birds perched on utility wires against the morning sky.
So I set to framing my shot and took a meter reading with the camera.
It read a f/stop of 5.6 at the speed of 1/100. All the photographs above were shot at ISO 200.
I knew that the reading was off, as I didn't need the detail in the birds. So I shot the scene with numerous speeds, so I could show the difference here. I could have changed f/stops also.
This is an important point to remember when shooting sunrise and sunset. The camera captures more color than your eye sees.
Also remember a card in the camera holds many images, unlike film which had a maximum of 36 shots. Plus you had to pay for the prints.