How to create this sun star effect?

H

hellboy80

Well-known member
Do I need a special filter for creating this sun star effect? What would you do to achieve this? Probably with fully closed aperture, right?





 
It's not lens flare...Well, there is lens flare in the photograph, but getting the sun to make that star effect is something different. It is with a full stopped down aperture that you'll get lights to start doing that....so just pull all your ND's and you'll probably be there in no time.
 
RyanT said:
It's not lens flare...Well, there is lens flare in the photograph, but getting the sun to make that star effect is something different. It is with a full stopped down aperture that you'll get lights to start doing that....so just pull all your ND's and you'll probably be there in no time.
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Considering that most of Tree of Life was shot with available light, I doubt they stopped their lenses down as much as needed to get that effect with the sun. Could have, but I have my doubts.

Also, I really think this was done in post, even though that kind of contradicts Malick's/Lubezki's style.
 
jscottprice said:
Considering that most of Tree of Life was shot with available light, I doubt they stopped their lenses down as much as needed to get that effect with the sun. Could have, but I have my doubts.

Also, I really think this was done in post, even though that kind of contradicts Malick's/Lubezki's style.
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Why wouldn't they do that? It seems to me like DP's often like a deep stop outside, as that's more natural to your eyes and how they see...it seems like it'd just be a by-product of that.
 
RyanT said:
Why wouldn't they do that? It seems to me like DP's often like a deep stop outside, as that's more natural to your eyes and how they see...it seems like it'd just be a by-product of that.
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Because even on film, stopping down enough to get that effect would greatly underexpose the image to a detriment. The sun is setting in the 2nd and 4th shots, which means the house would be falling into deep shadow.

It's possible it was done in-camera, and I'd believe it, since that fits more comfortably into Malick's style, but I still think it's a little too perfect in each of these 5 shots taken at different times of day.

I've only achieved that starburst effect in-camera when I stopped my lens down to f22 and beyond (on a long lens), but everything fell into darkness. This was on digital; never bothered trying to do this when I shoot film, so I'm only throwing darts here.
 
jscottprice said:
Because even on film, stopping down enough to get that effect would greatly underexpose the image to a detriment. The sun is setting in the 2nd and 4th shots, which means the house would be falling into deep shadow.

It's possible it was done in-camera, and I'd believe it, since that fits more comfortably into Malick's style, but I still think it's a little too perfect in each of these 5 shots taken at different times of day.

I've only achieved that starburst effect in-camera when I stopped my lens down to f22 and beyond (on a long lens), but everything fell into darkness. This was on digital; never bothered trying to do this when I shoot film, so I'm only throwing darts here.
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Really? Using the sunny 16 rule, with 50 ASA film, which is very low speed...you would have to stop down to f16 to get a correct exposure. Bump that up to 400 asa and the correct exposure with a 180 degree shutter would be f64. It's definitely doable.
 
RyanT said:
Really? Using the sunny 16 rule, with 50 ASA film, which is very low speed...you would have to stop down to f16 to get a correct exposure. Bump that up to 400 asa and the correct exposure with a 180 degree shutter would be f64. It's definitely doable.
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True, but it looks like these shots are at different times of day, which means they would have to be changing the shutter speed in each shot to adjust to the fixed aperture.

The time in some of those shots looks more like 6pm-8pm, and in others it looks like 2pm-4pm. I'd bet the former would be a little or a lot underexposed, if they did not change the shutter drastically. Granted, it's film, (35mm and some 65mm), so there's retrievable detail in underexposures, and it's hard to gauge noise on a small .png, but the perfectness of the starburst from shot to shot is what gets me.
 
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jscottprice said:
True, but it looks like these shots are at different times of day, which means they would have to be changing the shutter speed in each shot to adjust to the fixed aperture.

The time in some of those shots looks more like 6pm-8pm, and in others it looks like 2pm-4pm. I'd bet the former would be a little or a lot underexposed, if they did not change the shutter drastically. Granted, it's film, (35mm and some 65mm), so there's retrievable detail in underexposures, and it's hard to gauge noise on a small .png, but the perfectness of the starburst from shot to shot is what gets me.
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People rarely change the shutter to get the correct aperture because of the effect it has on motion. Instead people pop in different strengths of ND (.3, .6, or .9...sometimes 1.2) People will only change shutter speeds when they want that choppy effect for psychological reasons.

As far as the sun goes, the sunny 16 rule applies whenever you have direct sunlight, so different times of the day don't affect exposure really, it just changes how you might light it. Granted, you may want to open up a little bit more when your character is so heavily backlit by the sun, but since these are from pretty big movies, I'm sure they have big units they can use to fill things in and decrease that contrast ratio.
 
Yea, I understand that most shooters would elect to not change the shutter speed, instead using ND's, which I am rarely without in an outdoor setting nowadays. It's this that makes me question how shooting Sunny-16 would be at all effective in every screengrab above, especially if it's just to get this fun starburst effect.

Maybe they did use a truck full of lights to fill in the blanks, but, again, I think this doesn't really gel with Malick's style. I would believe this effect to be done with a particular filter in-camera or to be done in post, which would not be difficult at all. That I believe just a tad more than the former possibility just because of the filmmaker's MO.

Read here.
 
MorningSunRay.jpg
Geeee...
Its called go out at golden hour and push the BIG RED BUTTON on the camera.

This has got to be one of the easiest shots there is. Do people have Absoutely ZERO ability to do anything anymore at all??
 
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Another thing that's probably obvious to all posters but perhaps not to the OP is that the sun is not unobstructed in any of the shots. I'd bet even Craig's shot had the sun a bit below the horizon. This is one way to shoot backlit during sunset without blowing out the sky too badly. I use foliage to bring down the intensity of the background light to better match that of the foreground which also produces a nice flare.
 
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