Tip of the month: May 2023. Get your Starburst On!.
It can be hard to handle bright lights in a photo. It’s difficult to correctly expose the rest of the photo without overexposing the lights – which often appear as a huge burned-out blob spoiling the image. But there’s an easy technique that can turn a problem area into the sparkling highlight of your photo.
When you close your aperture down to a smaller size, small points of light begin to show this star-like effect. Remember that F-stop numbers are fractions, so making the aperture smaller means making the F-number bigger. I find that around F-16, F-18 or F-22, you start to see some great results. But if you are shooting with a wide-angle lens, you may not even need to go that far. The Fox Glacier photo (above) was shot at F-11 on a 20mm lens.
The windmill was shot at F-18
HERE’S MY HOT TIP: If you are having trouble getting this effect with the sun, try shooting it just peeking out from behind something solid. The full-on view of the sun is very hard to control, but when partially obscured the effect usually works much better.
Christchurch at night – shot at F-22
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