Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Beginner's Questions => Topic started by: maloneyphoto on October 31, 2020, 10:31:56 am
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Might be a silly question, but I can’t stand sunstars in my photos, and it seems like no one has a technique for preventing them. A web search for preventing, removing etc. shows results for how to add them or make them more pronounced. I know opening up helps, but with a lot of the modern lenses it seems like it occurs no matter what. Any thoughts or suggestions welcome!
Thanks!
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Might be a silly question, but I can’t stand sunstars in my photos, and it seems like no one has a technique for preventing them. A web search for preventing, removing etc. shows results for how to add them or make them more pronounced. I know opening up helps, but with a lot of the modern lenses it seems like it occurs no matter what. Any thoughts or suggestions welcome!
Thanks!
In addition to the size, the type of aperture (shape and number of blades, whether odd or even) also affect the sunstars. A lens with very high but odd count of blades will have reduced effect.
https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/sunstars.htm
Or don't shoot into the Sun... :)
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Or don't shoot into the Sun... :)
Yep, like Mum told me.
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Some zoom lenses are terrible and won't make a sun star, even stopped down...Use a wider aperture, with lower iso and faster shutter speed... Best thing is to simply test every lens you have and then use the ones that won't give you a star.
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Great suggestions, thank you all. I was hoping there would be some sort of trick that could help (i saw somewhere that a CPL would help), but Im willing to adjust my expectations accordingly.
When I was working with a mamiya 7 - I rarely saw sunstars. Alot of my work was long exposure at night, and if there were direct light sources in the shot, there was more of a halo than a burst.
Im assuming that the lenses for a mamiya 7 were the primary factor in why this was the case.
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Could the reason you got halos on the Mamiya was that you were shooting at a relative large aperture?
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Not typically. I usually stuck around f8-11
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It may be interesting to take a look at those Mamiya lenses and see how the aperture blades are configured at f/8 to f/11 to see if they offer a clue to why they didn't make stars for you. Maybe another factor is the coating and having fewer layers and a tad less light transmission perhaps slightly diffused the rays from ghosting.
Seems to me that years ago with less sophisticated and fewer layers of coating that any point source simply couldn't produce a star but all these years later, I may have fogging of my memory...