Is this Flare? - Anything I can do in Post to eliminate it?

[TheBigE]

All,

The photo below shows what I think is Sun Flare. I was trying to capture a sun star but every time I do - I get an image that is not very clean.

I have tried cleaning it up in PS and LR, and this is the best I can do....



Do I have any options? Is it my equipment or technique?

Thanks
Erik

[Shadowman]

It is but it works for the image, the bits on the column can be altered by cloning. Try using a lens hood but if you have the sun in your image it won't matter. I shot directly into the sun during an eclipse and used a cpl filter and minimized all flare.

Eclipse

[Manfred M]

The metadata says you shot at 16mm. Which lens are you shooting with? The ultrawide angle (UWA) lenses have lots of glass elements for the light to bounce off and that is what you are seeing here. The visible artifacts are there and the one that you don't notice is that your contrast is affected as well.

Pointing an UWA into the sun is generally not going to give you the greatest results, although the lens coatings on the high end ones do reduce this issue. Certain UWA lenses (the Tokina 11-16mm, for instance) is well known for this type of issue.

Can it be fixed in PP? In my view, not really when the problem is at this level.

[dem]

Make sure that you do not have any filters attached to the lens and the front element is clean. You will not eliminate flare completely but the number of spots can be reduced.

[TheBigE]

The metadata says you shot at 16mm. Which lens are you shooting with? The ultrawide angle (UWA) lenses have lots of glass elements for the light to bounce off and that is what you are seeing here. The visible artifacts are there and the one that you don't notice is that your contrast is affected as well.

Pointing an UWA into the sun is generally not going to give you the greatest results, although the lens coatings on the high end ones do reduce this issue. Certain UWA lenses (the Tokina 11-16mm, for instance) is well known for this type of issue.

Can it be fixed in PP? In my view, not really when the problem is at this level.

I was shooting with Nikon 16-85mm Lens. The level of work that seems to be required in PP is not really warranted as the composition is not all that strong, IMO.

Maybe a prime of some sort would have been a better option

[rpcrowe]

Perhaps another way to add the sun star is to cheat and add it using Photoshop (if you are editing using that program).

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...r+in+photoshop

[Dave Humphries]

That looks like backlit dust specks (or fine water drops) to me, I'd check the front and rear lens elements are clean.

I doubt it is on the sensor, but I might be wrong.

It would take time to get them all, but I'd definitely have expected a better clean up result from the spot healing in either LR or PS than that, how confident are you in your technique?
I assume you weren't just trying to do it in PS with the dust filter in one click? (I think it'll take an individual zapping on each)

Try this 5:45 video (I haven't watched it all, but it seems relevant and fairly current - and Julieanne knows her stuff)

Cheers, Dave

[TheBigE]

Thanks everyone for feedback, I used both PS and LR (different attempts) to clean up the image and did not find the results to be all the good. It is a severe issue - I know some lens suffer more when taking sun flares. The image below was taken with a Fish Eye Lens on a D810 and it is pretty clean.



I am going to chalk this one up to

Some dirt on lens Elements
Not the optimal lens for Sun Flare.

In the future I will add a 35mm prime to keep and use as needed. I suspect this will give me better sunflare.

[John 2]

That looks like backlit dust specks (or fine water drops) to me, I'd check the front and rear lens elements are clean.


Cheers, Dave

Looks that way to me as well. However, for a quick and dirty, a combination the Median filter in PS (Filters/Noise/Median) and the Spot Healing Tool will get you most of the way there by selecting the larger areas of blue. Gets more difficult in the area of the star burst but in a way some artefacts don't look out of place there.