Add beautiful starbursts to your photos without using a filter.
Turning a point of light into a starburst can add a spectacular effect to an otherwise mundane photograph. Special filters make it easy, but they also tend to affect all points of light in a similar manner and lead to undesirable results. Creating photos with natural-looking starbursts does not require filters and is not as complicated as you might imagine.
Instructions
1. Choose the lens you want to use, taking into account how many diaphragm blades it has. The more blades a lens has, the higher the number of rays or streaks in each starburst. Lenses with an even number of blades produce starbursts with an even number of rays, but most lenses have an odd number of blades, resulting in starbursts that have twice as many streaks.
2. Clean the lens carefully to remove any smudges or specs of dust. Having a clean lens is critical to all forms of photography, but even more so when you are trying to achieve dramatic special effects involving light.
3. Close the lens aperture down as small as possible by using your camera's manual controls. With most lenses, you will achieve a starburst effect by stopping down to f/20 or f/22, and even smaller apertures will result in more defined streaks emanating from each point of light. In most digital cameras, an aperture of f/22 will result in a softening of the image, but good starbursts are still possible with an aperture of about f/16.
4. Compose the shot. When taking daytime photos, position yourself so that you are shooting through the leaves of a tree or other obstacle that partially blocks the sun to add a sense of drama to the shot. At night, frame the image so that you have light sources at various distances between you and the horizon. The lights that are the brightest and the closest to you will likely be the ones to appear as starbursts in the image, while the lights in the background will not.
Tags: even number, most lenses, number blades, number rays, point light
