How to create little lightbursts like this?

[theraven]

I believe him, here are a few of mine that don't have all starbursts, especially the ones further away from the camera.

The world never stops... | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
All sizes | A500 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
A Quiet Street | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

[Ballistics]

A couple more examples of starbursts from this lens:
Moonlight over the Mansion | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
The Great Movie Fish | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
A "flare" for the library | Flickr - Photo Sharing! (straightened in Lightroom but shot with the fisheye)

I've got a ton of 'em on Flickr. You're welcome to pixel-peep to your heart's content but I assume you that it's the lens doing the work. I have too many photos to go through to spend time adding such things in software.

Hey if you say it isn't, I'll take your word for it. I just never saw starbursts on some lights and not others at such a wide aperture.

F13 is a wide aperture? It's pretty tiny, actually.

OK, you caught me. I've been secretly using software that I wrote to selectively add starbursts to certain photos in search of that elusive Flickr "Explore"! It's failed me dozens of times but it finally worked, and now you've got and blown my whole secret! And here I thought that I could keep it a secret forever! Especially when used on the utterly mundane and boring Transformers building photo I posted!



(yes, that is sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell!)

See what happens when you try too hard? You miss the mark completely. Relax big guy, I told you I took your word for it.

I was talking about the image @ f/5.

 

[EIngerson]

Wow. Just wow.

 

[Ballistics]

Wow. Just wow.

If this thread blows your hair back and shocks you, imagine what it's like outside in real life.

I merely questioned the ability to have sunstars at f/5. Don't be so uptight.

 

[EIngerson]

Wow. Just wow.

If this thread blows your hair back and shocks you, imagine what it's like outside in real life.

I merely questioned the ability to have sunstars at f/5. Don't be so uptight.

This place will never surprise me. But you keep digging, when you get half way through you start going up again.

 

[Ballistics]

Wow. Just wow.

If this thread blows your hair back and shocks you, imagine what it's like outside in real life.

I merely questioned the ability to have sunstars at f/5. Don't be so uptight.

This place will never surprise me. But you keep digging, when you get half way through you start going up again.

Not true, but so what? Don't be so over dramatic.

and you say wow, just wow, because you are unmoved?

 

[o hey tyler]

In this thread: Internet sleuthery.

 

[Ballistics]

In this thread: Internet sleuthery.

And those who didn't know something (myself) learned something in the process. Yay for sleuthery.

 

[andrewkurcan]

Yea... definitely didn't see Groucho's post - I of course blame everything outside of my own lack of observation!

 

[Helen B]

The intensity of the light beam in the direction of the camera affects the brightness and hence the appearance of the diffraction 'stars'. Diffraction ( it is not reflection) always happens at any aperture, it doesn't suddenly switch on. Whether you can see it in the image depends on how bright the stars are. Once the visible light source gets so bright that it saturates the sensor you have no further indication of how bright the light is. Some white blobs may be just saturated, some may be way over the saturation level. The lights that are just over saturation level may not produce stars that register beyond the light and the flare around it. Very bright sources can produce stars at fairly wide apertures, because the light that produced them is so bright.