How to prevent lens flare while photography in strong light – 5 Ways

Photographing under strong light sources may have experienced glare shooting. It may be cool to feel glare sometimes, but most of the time, glare affects the picture.

When the front lens of a lens that is illuminated by bright, non-imaging light from the sun or other light source, lens halos are easily created and are usually accompanied by a haze that significantly reduces the contrast of the picture.

Although glare sometimes appears as an artistic effect, most of the time, it may be an extremely unwelcome attachment in the photograph and something that photographers want to avoid.

How to prevent lens flare
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Let’s take a look at what we can do to help prevent glare during shooting.

 

1: Use the hood

How to prevent lens flare in photography
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The easiest way is to use a hood, and most lenses will also have a hood. Because most of the glare is caused by direct light, the hood can help us to effectively prevent light from directly hitting the front mirror of the lens.

Not only can we avoid glare, but the hood can actually help protect our camera in the face of minor impacts.

When using a hood, it is best to use the original hood as much as possible, because they are designed specifically for this lens, if you use a third-party hood, may cause vignetting because of incompatibility, especially when using Shorter focal lengths.

In general, a circular lens hood is suitable for lenses with a longer focal length, and a petal-type lens hood is suitable for lenses with a shorter focal length.

 

2: Blocked by hand

How to prevent lens flare blocking by hands
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If it does not have a hood, it does not matter. The emergency solution is to block it by hand. We only need to cover the direction of the light coming from the front of the lens to form a C character, and constantly adjust the angle of the hand until the halo disappears completely…  However, be careful not to hold the lens too much inwards.

 

3: Check your filter

Check your filters to prevent lens flare
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Although filters are an indispensable addition tool for landscape photography, additional lenses may indeed increase the chance of glare, especially low-quality filters, which often cause more problems with the image.

If you find that your picture is plagued by glare and the current environment does not have to use filters, try removing the filter.

 

4: Blocking light

blocking light to prevent lens flare
Photo by Trang Ta on Unsplash

In general, the reason for forming a halo is that a strong light source shines directly on the lens, so sometimes when we take pictures, we can try to reconstruct the picture so that some elements of the picture become blocking factors to block the light source, thus avoiding flare.

 

5: Increase the angle

Increase the camera angle to prevent lens flare
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If you see a halo in the viewfinder, try adjusting your shooting angle so that the light source changes the angle of the lens, looking for an angle that won’t produce glare, and avoid direct sunlight into your lens.

Source: letsfilm.org