Venus and Mercury Setting after Sunset.
On Monday (18th) a successful attempt was made to photograph Venus and Mercury setting after sunset as shown in the accompanying mosaic and time-lapse animation (to be posted as a comment). There were three problems in doing so. The first is that Mercury is still close to the Sun in the sky so from the Southern Hemisphere there is less than an hour between the Sun setting and Mercury disappearing below the horizon. The second is that our sunsets are often followed by stratospheric aerosol twilight arches which are so bright that any luminous objects get lost in the glare. The third is the presence of Transmitter Hill which from my location can interrupt the view of the setting planets. Even though Mercury appears in all the images these only cover a time interval of seven minutes (from 5.42 to 5.49 pm) and even then it was not visible to the naked eye. Hopefully this will improve during the week as Mercury rises above the sunset glare to pair with Venus - details at https://earthsky.org/tonight/mercury-venus-pair-up-at-dusk-may-21-and-22

Tripod-mounted Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60 in night scenery mode

Photoshop Elements 15 - crop, register and reduce six images to produce mosaic