Kitt Peak sunset silhouette

I was thinking it would be fun to get the sun setting right behind Kitt Peak, but the location west of Tucson along Kinney Road in Tucson Mountain Park was a bit too far north so that the Sun set on the northern flank of the Coyote Mountains that lie just east of Kitt Peak, near the right edge of this image.  With the harsh sunset lighting, I used some HDR combines of a set of 5 images to get the best range in the image.

This first HDR combine uses the Ashikhmin operator and displays the colors in the sky nearly as I saw them.  The 5 exposures that went into the combine range from 1/3000 sec at f/16, ISO 800 with my 75-300mm telephoto lens at 250mm focal length to 1/180 seconds at f/16, ISO 800.

This HDR combine using the same 5 images mutes the colors with a Mantiuk 06 operator but shows detail in the mountain rainge that is not visible in the more saturated version.