How To Shoot Better Sun Stars

A relatively new trend has emerged in online photography communities over the last few years, which involves shooting into the sun or other bright light sources so that the bright light creates star points around it—also known as sun stars.

The Method

I run across many tutorials and tips for people explaining how to do it. Typically, they all say the same thing: shoot high apertures, anywhere from f16 to f22.

While this does usually work, it’s not always the best practice. I find that shooting at higher apertures on many of our high-megapixel cameras has a massive impact on image quality due to diffraction. See why you should avoid shooting small apertures.

So what do we do?

One solution is to shoot several images. One for the Sunstar, so maybe f19, then a more moderate aperture that suits the scene’s demands. For landscape photography, I like anywhere from f8 to f11. Then, we can take those two images and blend them in the sunstars using Photoshop. 

The other solution? Find a different lens.

I’ve noticed different lenses exhibit different Sunstar qualities. 7-blade apertures vs 11-blades will give very different results. But I also noticed that some lenses give sun stars at much lower apertures, even at f4.5.

I used the Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 Heliar III lens with this shoot. I can produce sun stars at f4.5 to f16.

I’m unsure why this lens gives sun stars at such low apertures. Maybe it has something to do with the smaller Leica Mount lenses, or maybe it has to do with the simple design of the lens.

Regardless, it’s a cool look, and it gives images this extra magic I can’t simply produce with my other lenses. Exploring other Voigtlander and Leica Mount lenses should be fun to see if they produce similar results.

Camera Used: Fujifilm X-T1
Lens: Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 Heliar III
ISO 200, f5.6, 1/150

Camera Used: Fujifilm X-T1
Lens: Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 Heliar III
ISO 200, f5.6, 1/150