"Sunstar How to"


1) Small Apertures – generally speaking, you’ll have to use a small aperture, something like f16 or f22 to make fully-formed crisp sun stars. Wider apertures like f2.8 or f5.6 simply don’t cut it. The starburst is caused by light passing through a small aperture and being diffracted (or spread out) across the aperture blades in the lens. The more blades and the less curved they are the better the star. Not all lenses are created equally.

2) Hard Edge Obstruction – Although you can make a nice star when shooting the sun high in the sky, you will get the best results (i.e. small size with minimal flare) when you play peek-a-boo with the light source. To do this position the camera so the sun (or other light source) is mostly obscured by some compositional element in your frame – something like a clean horizon, edge of a tree, rock outcrop or building, harder and/or smoother edges yield the best results.

3) High Fidelity Light – In addition to obscuring the light source, I find it’s best to use whats called high-fidelity light, namely light that is pure and clean. When the light is being filtered through high clouds, atmospheric haze or fog the resulting sunstars tend to be muddy and lack clarity.

4) Use Live View to Preview – Once you've settled on your composition and are ready to shoot, using Live View in conjunction with the depth of field preview button (sorry Nikon people) to preview how your sunstar will look as well as get a sense for how much flare is being produced. You may be surprised to see how much a little shift in camera position (up/down, left/right) can change the size and shape of your sunstar, as well as how much resulting flare you’ve got in the frame. You can also use this method when choosing your aperture as you’ll see exactly what the sunstar will look like. You may not need to stop all the way down to f22 to get the desired effect.

5) Not all Lenses are Equal – Unfortunately this is one area where the gear really does make the difference. Not all lenses make sunstars or handle flare equally. Generally speaking, the higher quality “pro” level glass make better, more defined sunstars than “consumer” level lenses.


Here is a Link to a Pretty good Video as well..
https://youtu.be/OpPI2AVFS4w

I'm doing this Challenge because It's something I've been trying to learn myself. and I thought some of you might want to learn as well..

The weather Here has been pretty yucky, so I haven't been able to get out as much as I'd like Of course this Viral state of affairs hasn't helped either, I'm hoping to try a bit more using artificial Light..