Bright light can cause light to spread on a lens system, which is known as lens flare.
It can sometimes make an unwanted artefact in the picture. When you work with a bright light source, like the sun, flare can happen. Because of an imaging device, the light can spread out. It can happen when the lens has a flaw in its material, which can lead to forward scattering or internal reflection.
Lens flare is common with zooms and other lenses that have a lot of different parts. Internal scattering can be caused by more than one disturbance. There are two main types of flare: visible artefacts flare and glare across the shot. There is less contrast and colour intensity in glare flare. The artefacts that can be seen look like holes that an eye diaphragm would make.
Lens flare: how it works
When bright light, like sunlight, comes into your camera lens, it bounces around inside it instead of hitting the sensor and making a picture. There are artefacts in the video you have because the light that bounces off the aperture, lens elements, and sensor is spread out. When you’re taking a certain kind of picture, lens flare can either ruin the shot or make it better.
Lens flare can also be seen with the naked eye when looking at objects that reflect light or sources of very bright light. Flare-like patterns can sometimes be caused by your eyebrows, though they may just be diffraction artefacts. Artificial bright light used for photography and moonlight are two other types of bright light that can cause a lens flare.
Lack of contrast, haze, orbs, polygons all over the picture, streaks, half-round shapes with rainbow colours, and other things can be caused by lens flare. Lens flare comes in three different types: veiling, ghosting flare, and sensor or red dot flare. Here’s a full look at the three types of lens flare:
1. Flare of veil
A veiling flare is caused by a bright light outside the lens’s field of view. Most of the time, the front lens elements are not visible in the picture, but the light gets to the front parts. It looks like the picture is hidden behind a veil, which lowers the contrast on your screen. It’s easy to see that there is a haze or lack of difference where dark parts of the frame look lighter with many colours.
If the sun is above the subject and the photo area around it is bright, veling flare can make the picture dark and bright. Although the veiling flare doesn’t change the area around the sun, it does make the image in the shot less contrasty. Many things, like dirty front elements, dirty or low-quality screens, not having anti-reflective coating technologies, and more, can make veilings worse.
Using good multi-coated lenses can cut down on veiling flare. To keep the veiling flare under control, you can use Nikon’s own Nano Crystal technology. Sometimes a veiling lens flare in your shot is beautiful, and sometimes it’s not what you want.
If you want your pictures to have a strong veiling flare, you can use an old lens that you have to focus by hand. It makes the whole picture fuzzy, so you can’t see the parts of the picture you don’t want to print. For high-quality pictures, you can use an effective lens to keep the veiling flare under control.
2. Flare of Ghosts
Ghosting flare is a starburst effect that spreads out polygonal forms, or “ghosts,” all over the picture. All the artefacts that can be seen in the picture are shown by the ghosting flare. Different shaped and coloured stars appear from the bright light source. They can add different artefacts to the whole picture to make it better or worse. They might be bright light sources reflecting off of them or shapes that look like the aperture lens.
Orbs or other artefacts can be spread out over every picture that is made. There are different lens elements that change how many balls show up on the picture. There are more ghosts in the picture when the lens has more features. You can improve the ghosting flare on your scene with the 70-200mm lens, which has a complicated design and many parts. The Nikon 70-200mm, on the other hand, lessens the effect of ghosting and flare.
When stooped down, diaphragm lenses can also cause internal reflection. When you bend the lens down, the minimum aperture goes down, which makes the ghosting effect less noticeable. This can give your pictures polygonal shapes, so you can control the effect.
3. Eye Flare or Red Dot
When light hits a sensor, goes through a lens, and then hits the camera sensor again, this is called flare. A bright light source can sometimes give off red dots. Small mobile cameras tend to have a short flange distance.
If you don’t have a good camera lens, red dot flare can make your pictures look better or worse. These days, compact cameras with a short flange distance often take better pictures with red dot flare.
Things that affect lens flare
There are some things that can make lens flare worse or better. Lens flare is affected by the following things.
1. The focal length
How far away the visual centre of the lens is from the camera sensor is called its focal length. Millimetres are usually used to measure. The pictures you take might not be as good if the focal length is longer. With a short focal length, you can either get less lens blur or a better picture with it. A shorter focus length can also be bad because it can make a big, bright light source look smaller.
2. Lens goodness
Lenses of good quality can cut down on reflection and glare flare. Some have multi-coating technology that helps them take better pictures even when the lens flare effect is present.
3. Being clean
Keeping the lenses clean will cut down on shadows and glare flares. Don’t get fingerprints on your glasses if you want to keep them clean.
4. Filters
The amount of lens flare in your photos can depend on the quality of the filters you use. High-end filters can help you get better pictures by reducing lens flare problems by a large amount.
5. Lens Covers
Stray light rays can cause lens flare, but a lens hood can cut them down. They make sure that the camera doesn’t have an extra area that reflects light and lowers the quality of your pictures when there isn’t enough light. A round lens hood or a petal lens hood can be used.
6. Parts of the Lens
How many ghosts you get on your picture depends on the lens parts. There are more ghosts in a shot when there are more details.
7. Making a Lens
The lens flare can be changed by how the lens is made. Even without expensive anti-reflective coatings, the design can help control lens flare on its own.
8. Multiple coatings
Lens flare can also be affected by multi-coated lens elements. They can cut down on lens blur when it makes the picture less clear. Mutti-coating technologies are great ways to keep lens flare from showing up in your photos.
How to Make Lens Flare
Some lens flare photography tips can help you take better pictures. The photos you take will be more beautiful, which will make them more valuable to professional shooters.
1. Shoot with the sun directly on it
If you shoot in the sun’s direction, you can get lens flare. When light comes into the lenses, it can be reflected or bent, making different kinds of lens flare instead of a picture. You can get the light from the sun or from a stage light source. If you face the light straight on, you can get perfect lens flare results.
2. Put your thing somewhere bright.
Putting the object in front of a bright light source can help you get a certain kind of lens flare. By blocking the light, you can get a bit of flare around the edges of what you’re photographing, which will make the picture look even better.
3. Make shoots with stars.
Setting up your picture shoots for sunrise or sunset can help you get perfect lens flare effects. You can get more interesting bursts in your photos by using different focus lengths. The focus lengths help you get different ray sizes, which lets you control the flares.
4. Change how the camera’s lens is set.
You can get different views of the lens flare if you change the aperture setting on your camera. To change how much light gets through, you can set your camera to the smallest aperture and then open it up.
If you use a wider aperture, you might get more bursts that are clearer, more distinct, and more attractive. The light in the picture studio is another thing that can change the quality of the burst, along with the light in the room or from your light source.
5. Do tests at night
Taking pictures at night in places with lots of light, like under the street lights, can give you great results. For more interesting bursts, you can also take pictures straight at the moonlight. To get more lens flare, take your camera and shoot at separate points of light. You may want to write down the lenses and lighting spots that work best for you.
6. See what you can do.
You have to be creative when you take pictures. There are other things you can try to help you get a clear burst. The less editing you do on your work, the more effort you put into getting shots with the flare that makes the picture better. You can also make your pictures better by using different glasses and sets of rules.
7. How to use filters and lenses
Changing the glasses can make your pictures look much better. With each eye, a scene can look different. To make lens flares that you can control, you can also use polarising filters, UV filters, or neutral density filters. When you use a higher quality, the pictures or scenes you make will look better. Flare problems can happen with ones that aren’t well made.
How to Make a Camera Lens Less Flare
To make it less bad, you can do three things:
(i) Use prime lenses
It is known that prime lenses have fewer elements, which helps cut down on lens flare in your photos. It only lets a few reflections show up every once in a while, which makes zoom models perfect for reducing flare. You can give them a try since they are less expensive than zoom ones.
ii. Change the way you frame it
You can change how much light comes in by changing how your camera is framed. Since you can move your light source around while you’re setting up, changing your position might help reduce lens flare.
(iii) Shoot when the light is behind you
Facing the other way might help if you are getting a lot of lens flare because you are shooting straight into a bright light source. You can try to take a picture of something by putting it in front of you so that the light source, like the sun, is behind you. At this point, you can change how much light from the sun comes in to cut down on the lens flare.
Getting Rid of Lens Flare in Pictures
There are a lot of different ways to get rid of lens flare in a picture or scene. You can use a spot repair brush or clone to have flare spots disappear on their own. There are adjustment layers that you can use to fix lens flare. You can blend and mask several layers to get rid of big areas of bursts in the image.
You can change the image’s saturation or colour without changing the underlying textures if you want to make hair, skin, or the face look more realistic. The same method works great for making the skin tone of a picture even.
You can also get rid of flares in a picture with Photoshop. But if it’s so big in the picture, it might be hard to get rid of because it will make the picture look fake. How well you can draw more complicated lens flares in your picture will depend on how good you are at Photoshop.
How to Keep Lens Flare Away
This is just how photography works. Lens flare is one of them. There are many things you can do in your photos to stop lens flare. Here are some things you can do to make your scenes less lens flare-y:
I. Putting on a lens hood
With a lens hood, you can keep direct sunlight from beating on your lens elements. Also, it keeps them from getting small dents and knocks that could damage them. There are cheap hoods that you can buy if your lens doesn’t come with one.
A camera lens hood keeps lens flare out of your scenes because it is rough and black, which stops light from reflecting around the lens. When shopping for a lens hood, keep in mind that a round lens hood works best with a long lens and a petal lens hood works best with a wide-angle lens.
II. Quality is important
Some professional lenses have advanced anti-reflective coatings that help get rid of lens flare problems in your photos. Even though they are pricey, they let you take pictures quickly without having to worry about shadows in the lens. They are simple to clean and don’t gather dust that can cause gaps in your scenes.
III. Putting your hands in front of the light
If you forget your lens hood, you can use your hand to block the light. To change how much light gets in, you can make a C-shaped curve with your hand around the top of your lens. To do this, all you have to do is make sure that your hands don’t cast any extra shadows on the area.
IV. Don’t use zoom binoculars.
Because zoom lenses have more parts in their optical formulas, your pictures will have more lens flare. Prime lenses are a better choice because they have simpler optical designs and fewer parts. Lens flare is less likely to happen when you have fewer things to deal with.
V. Setting the Scene
Framing makes it easy to change how your pictures look from different angles. Changing where your photos are placed can have a big effect on how well you avoid lens flare.
VI. Keeping the sun out
To block out the sun’s light, you can use things like trees, mountain areas, boulders, and more. You can get less or no lens flare by blocking the sun with things. Because some of the sun or light sources are shining on it, it can also look like a starburst.
VII. Change your angles
You need to change the way you’re shooting so that you’re not facing the sun straight on. The less flares you get in your pictures, the farther away you are from the sun. Standing in the shade, away from direct sunlight, can also help keep lens flare at bay.
No. 8. Regularly wipe away dust and fingerprints
It is very important to keep your glasses clean. The most common things that can cause lens flare are dust particles or fingerprints. Use a microfiber cloth to wipe the dirt off nice and soft.
IX. Check your stuff.
Lens flare can happen more often with some camera gear than with others. Because of this, it is very important to make sure that your equipment has the right lens elements and internal parts so that light can pass through without reflecting.
X. Editing by professionals
You can also use professional tools like Photoshop to change the lens flare. Even though it’s not the easiest method, it can completely get rid of glare in photos. When you’re editing photos, professional software makes it easy and quick to get rid of unwanted light shapes. To get rid of them, you can use a brush tool, a spot repair tool, and other tools.
In short:
In photography, flare can either make your picture better or worse. How you manage the lights can make the difference between getting them in your pictures and not. Some shooters use it to make their pictures of nature better, even though it doesn’t belong in many pictures. It’s easy to avoid them when you’re taking pictures and get clear pictures.
Lens flare can help your picture look more artsy, especially when you’re taking pictures for a business. But you might want to stay away from it when getting pictures of things like ID cards, driver’s licenses, and so on.
FAQs
1. What exactly makes lens flare happen?
When light from a very bright source gets into your glasses, it’s called lens flare. The image can be different based on where the light is coming from and how strong it is. If the light source is very bright, it might happen even if it’s not right in front of the lens.
2. Why is lens flare a bad thing?
Lens blur can make your picture less clear, which lowers its quality. On the other hand, photographers and filmmakers who use it to make their work better don’t always do bad things.
3. How do I get rid of lens flare?
To avoid lens flare completely, keep bright light sources out of your picture. A lens hood can block the sun’s rays that could cause a lens flare. Keeping your lens clean can also get rid of lens flare in your pictures.
4. Can a lens hood keep lens flare from happening at night?
To keep your lens from flare at night, you can take off all of your covers. When taking pictures, using high-quality coated glasses can also cut down on lens flare. When taking pictures in low light, you can stop lens flare by using a big aperture. Also, you shouldn’t use small lens sizes because they can make lens flare show up more in your pictures.
5. Is it possible to make a fake lens flare?
It is possible to add a fake lens flare to your photos while they are being edited. Professional editing software lets you add lens flare that doesn’t look natural to your photos. If you don’t have any other choice, adding a fake lens flare to your photos might work.