TOP TIPS FOR A PERFECT STARBURST

Capture super-sharp starbursts with these essential camera skills

01 CURVED OR STRAIGHT

The starburst effect can vary dramatically depending on the aperture blades in your lens. There are two key factors – if the blades are curved or straight. Straight-edge blades create sharper rays in your starburst. With curved blades, the star is more mushy.

02 BLADES AND SPIKES

The second factor is the number of aperture blades in your lens. If it’s an even number of blades you’ll get the same number of rays. If it’s an odd number like the Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 lens used here, then you’ll get double the number of rays, giving a 14-point star.

03 BLOCK THE SUN WITH YOUR HAND

When shooting into the sun, lens flare is inevitable. Firstly, make sure the front element of your lens is spotless. If you still find flare, try snapping an extra frame with your fingers covering the sun. You can then combine this with your other shots later.

04 BRACKET YOUR EXPOSURES

When shooting into a bright light, your camera metering might be fooled into underexposing the scene. Give yourself a bit of a safety net by bracketing your shots. This’ll also give you the option to create an HDR or perform exposure blending later.

05 PLAN THE POSITION OF THE SUN

If you want the sunburst to appear in a certain spot in your composition, you can plan ahead by using an app like Photopills. This maps the position of the sun over your phone camera feed, so you can know in advance exactly where the sun will be at any time of day.

06 USE DARK EDGES

A dark edge can help to create contrast with the sunstar, as demonstrated in the opening image. If the surrounding sky is too bright, the sunstar tends to get lost, as is the case with this shot. Here there’s less dark tree, consequently the sunstar is less obvious.