Pixiq

Shoot Into the Sun

Many photographers have heard that it's not a good idea to shoot into the sun, but direct sunlight entering the lens can't hurt the camera at all, it won't injure your eyes if you do it correctly, and if you follow the advice set out here, it can make for some awesome photographs.

A

If you shoot the sun with a wide-angle lens, it will appear very small in the frame, like in photo A. This is significant for two reasons: First, this tiny speck of light can’t hurt your eyes even if you stared at it all day; second, the diminutive size of the sun means that its influence on the meter reading is negligible. I’ll explain how the sun can adversely affect the meter reading in a moment.

When you use a telephoto lens, the sun is large in the frame. The longer the lens is, the larger the sun will appear. For example, photo B was taken on Santorini Island in Greece with a focal length of 130mm. The leopard silhouette, C, was taken with a 500mm telephoto. You can see how the size of the sun increased when I used the big glass. Photo D shows an even larger sun because I used a 2x teleconverter with the 500mm lens, for a total of 1000mm.

B  

C  

D

Notice that all of these pictures were taken at sunset, and as a result, the light entering the camera was diminished significantly. Not only are sunrise and sunset the most beautiful times of day to shoot, but also, the sun is weak when it is close to the horizon, so it isn’t painful to look at it in the viewfinder. I rarely include the sun in the shot during the middle of the day. For artistic purposes and to make it easy on my eyes, I usually shoot the sun within an hour or so after sunrise or an hour before sunset.

Star Effect

When you photograph point sources of light with small lens apertures (e.g., f/16, f/22), the lights typically look like stars with radiating beams of light. This is most pronounced with wide-angle lenses, but normal lenses and medium telephotos show a similar effect too. Any point source of light is affected, such as the headlights of cars, streetlights, bare bulbs, and of course the sun. Since wide-angle lenses make the sun appear very small in the frame, the definition of the star is quite sharp. When using a longer lens, sometimes I will partially hide it behind a branch, a ridgeline, or even a person, so it appears smaller, and that way, I am assured of the star effect. 

For example, in photo E, I positioned myself so the sun was partially obscured by the shoulder of one of the Samburu tribesmen I photographed in Kenya. I think the star effect adds a dynamic quality to the picture. I used a 16mm wide-angle lens to shoot this, and even though the sun would have formed a star without being partially obscured, I knew that if it looked smaller, the star would appear more defined, making a more compelling addition to the composition.

E

Similarly, in photo F, I shot from a vantage point such that the sun was peeking from behind the branch of this hoarfrost-covered tree in Lone Pine, California. This was taken with a medium telephoto (130mm) and to make sure I got the star effect, I made the sun appear as small as possible. To ensure I get a nicely shaped star, I typically use a lens aperture of f/16 or smaller.

F

Exposure

When you include the sun in the composition, exposure can be challenging. This is because the sun is so brilliant that light meters don’t know how to handle it. What often happens is that the pictures turn out too dark.

To understand why the built-in light meter in your camera can be deceived into producing underexposed pictures, you have to know how light meters work. All meters are programmed to produce correctly exposed photographs when they detect middle-toned, or “middle-gray,” subjects. (The term “middle gray” refers to tone, not color, so that means middle red, middle green, etc.). For example, a person wearing a red shirt and blue jeans standing in front of green foliage is an almost entirely middle-toned scene, and it is exactly what the meter is designed to expose for. Photos G and H are examples of the type of middle-toned scenes that meters are programmed to understand. In both shots, you can see some shadow areas and highlights, but the overall subjects are middle-toned.

G

H

The problems begin when you have too much contrast. The brilliant sun juxtaposed against clouds or landforms is an example of contrast that is so extreme that the outcome may not be what you want. The meter only understands middle gray, and  therefore the resulting exposure is an attempt at rendering the sun and the bright sky around it middle-toned, resulting in underexposure. Or, conversely, the camera may attempt to render dark areas of the image middle gray, thereby overexposing the image. Either way, it’s problematic.

What is the solution? There are two approaches you can use to arrive at the correct exposure. First, you can take the meter reading in another area of the frame, away from the sun, so that the meter isn’t detecting any direct sunlight. Point the camera toward a middle-toned part of the sky, such as a solid blue area or a gray cloud, and take the reading using the spot-metering mode. This will force the meter to see only a narrow angle of the entire scene (about 3 – 5% of it), allowing you to control, to a certain degree, the area that is used for the reading. Depending on the camera and the current settings, you may need to push a button in order to lock exposure so you can recompose the frame once you’ve gotten a reading. You will increase the accuracy of this technique if you use a telephoto lens because it will further narrow the angle that the light meter uses to read the light. The red circles in photo J mark two areas that are middle gray; if you use areas like these for metering, the exposure will be correct. When I took this shot, I used the area that the upper left circle indicates and got an accurate exposure.

An alternative solution is to simply take a shot, study the LCD monitor on the back of the camera, and if the picture is too dark, you can adjust the exposure compensation dial on the camera. Usually, the adjustments in exposure can be made in 1/3-stop increments. It will be trial and error as you make an educated guess of how much more exposure is needed, but a good starting point would be +2/3. From there, you can take another shot and see if you like the results. If you don’t, tweak the exposure either plus or minus until the exposure is perfect.

J

Lens Flare

One of the unfortunate side effects of including the sun in the frame is the lens flare that sometimes results. It looks like hexagonal, discolored shapes cutting across your picture. Their size and placement depend on the lens you are using and the angle of the lens axis to the sun. If the sun is just outside the frame, you can use either a lens hood or your hand to block the light from striking the front glass surface of the lens, which will often prevent the flare. However, if you can see the sun in the picture, then the flare is impossible to eliminate unless you partially block the sun with some element in the photograph or you use Photoshop in post-processing to clone it out.

You can see in photo K  that there is some lens flare. It does add to the idea that the light from a harsh desert sun is intense, but it is distracting because it is magenta and clearly defined—it draws the eye away from the stark landscape. Before I would print this, I would use Photoshop to clone it out with the Healing Brush. In the case of photo L, the ocotillo cactus partially hid the sun, thereby eliminating the lens flare.

K

L