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September 7, 2010Posted in: General, Help needed
Image © The James Kendall Of The Pistoleers licenced under Creative Commons
When shooting into the sun – for instance at sunset or sun rise – is there a way of minimizing or eliminating sun spots or is this something that needs to be done in the post processing stage?
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Flare is caused by light bouncing about among the various lenses (layers of glass) that make up the lens mounted on the front of your camera. Getting rid of any filters will get rid of some of the flare.
In the example above having sun hidden more by the figure with the board would have cut down on the flare and made the figures more distinct silhouettes.
There are techniques I use in post-processing to tame flare by a bit but usually a dramatic flare such as the one in the example cannot be gotten rid of and has to be lived with.
If plan A fails (avoiding it) and plan B (making it look good / an effect that you want) isn’t what you want, plan C (minimize it) comes into force.
Flare tends to have a particular colour / tint. If it is easy to isolate the flare (the example above wouldn’t really come into that category) then you can reduce the saturation in that particular colour channel (e.g. red flare, reduce the red saturation in that area). I used that technique on this shot to reduce the intensity of the flare a little. If you look at where the flare is still present, you can see a faint larger ring around it – this used to be a lot more obvious. Selecting that area and reducing the red saturation in it reduces its intensity. You could go further and clone some of it out.
We’ve just what you need at the Great British Landscapes website. But in summary, the best thing you can do is to cast a shadow over the front of your camera lens. If this means your finger will be in the picture then take two shots, one with the finger, one without and blend them together (you will have to have a steady hand or use a tripod).
You can also use ‘depth of field preview’ to see just what the flare will look like (it changes with aperture/fstop).
Quite often, just moving a small amount (getting a different angle to the sun) can make a huge difference.