Art-SX

Avoiding Lens Flare While Creating a Dynamic Image

In this particular image, the sun is peaking around one of the Neve Penitentes in Paso Negro, Chile.

In this shot, I wanted to include the sun but I also wanted to avoid the lens flare. How I was able to achieve this is just by having just the barest amount of the sun peaking around the pinnacle of ice. Just a tiny little fraction of the sun was enough to create the effect of what I was trying to achieve, which was the sun peaking around without overwhelming or flooding the lens with the rays of the sun and having all sorts of distracting lens flares appear.

“I would rather have a bit of a lens flare than not have that beautiful halo of the sun peaking around the ice.”

It's interesting to note that at f/22 you create a really, beautiful multi-pronged star which is this tiny fraction of light coming around the ice. You can see that as you are looking through your viewfinder and move your camera in the minutest amounts of increments and I fine-tune this and I can literally see the lens flares coming and going depending on how I move the camera. So, its something you can control greatly and if you are not able to achieve the total elimination of the lens flare it's a minor a sacrifice. In other words, I would rather have a bit of a lens flare than not have that beautiful halo of the sun peaking around the ice. The other alternative of course is to scan the image and eliminate the lens flare altogether, which is quite easy to do now with the digital process.

How I achieved the exposure was quite easy, the sun being the brightest element and the dark sky and distant hills the darkest elements. I just simply spot-metered off the main Penitente to the right of the sun and achieved my middle tone, which rendered the entire image into the proper exposure.