5 Easy Tips for Getting Sun Flares and Rainbows in Your Photos
If you’ve been trying to figure out how to take your photos to the next level, learning how to manipulate sun flares and rainbows in your photos is a great next step. Light is a crucial part of photography and learning everything you can about it is always a good idea to help your photos look more intentional and beautiful in a noticeable way. Out of all the methods we’ve been testing recently, these are our favorites, many include no additional purchases!
If you’re interested in taking better sunset photos, we tell all our secrets in this post!
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This example is not using a prism. This type of flare can be achieved more often with a smartphone camera with the light entering the lens from a high angle. This one is specifically taken with a Pixel phone at ISO 64 1/800 f/2.
Use a Prism (or another rainbow making tool):
To get a good-looking rainbow, try using a prism! This is a pretty well-known tip. However, make sure your prism is real glass to get the best rainbow effects and make sure the light is hitting it the correct way. You can do this by spinning and rotating the prism in front of your lens. Also, try moving the prism closer and farther from your lens. You can get all sorts of effects with prisms (not just rainbows) by rotating the prism near your lens. You can even create reflections of objects or your subject for a surreal and otherworldly look. The prism does take a bit to master though. You may have to play around with it multiple times before you start getting the look that you’re trying to achieve.
This shot is a good example of light rays and a sun flare. Most of the lines of light are from the light rays coming down from the clouds you can tell there is also a flare from the bottom left corner where there are green rounded bits of light reflecting from the lens. This photo was taken at f/9 so it’s more glowy and less star-like. (ISO 800 1/1250 f/9)
Shoot Toward the Sun:
If you’re trying to get a natural lens flare, you should shoot toward the sun. Your lens doesn’t have to fully be in the sunlight to get a flare, and you can control the amount of sun going into your lens to avoid over-exposure. To get a more colorful flare, play around with where you’re shooting from. Move around to try and find the sweet spot so that a nice, colorful flare shows up. This doesn’t work as well at certain times of the day, but it does work at more than just golden hour. I’ve gotten great flare shots in the middle of the day, it all depends on your light and how it’s hitting your lens.
In this photo, the angle of the light entering the lens created large circles of rainbow light near the initial flare. I used the trees to filter the light coming in. The photo was taken at ISO 250 1/320 f/9.
Shoot with a Higher F-Stop:
If you’re trying to figure out how photographers get that amazing pointed star sunburst in their photos, this tip is for you! A higher f-stop produces different kinds of sunbursts. You can try anywhere from f-11 to f-22 for different looks. Many people love f-18 for their sunbursts. I recommend trying all sorts of f-stops to find out which is your favorite. A lower-numbered f-stop will get you a great glow and a higher-numbered one will get you a pointed star. Usually, the higher your f-stop, the more points you will get in your star.
This is a good example of a glowy sun flare just above the lighthouse and the f-stop is at f/5.6. (ISO 400 1/250 f/5.6)
This is a good example of a star-like sun burst above our tent and the f-stop was at f/11. (ISO 800 1/25 f/11)
A great filtered light example with a colorful spot near my left elbow. This shot was taken at f/2 so the flare is very glowy. (ISO 100 1/400 f/2)
Filter Your Light:
To further gain control over the light hitting your lens, try covering the sun with your subject, your surroundings (trees, logs, buildings, etc), and even your hand (just out of frame of course!) or objects you hold in front of your lens. Filtered light produces some of my favorite effects. Filtered light is also a lot easier to manipulate than full sun. You can go through most of these shots on this post and see that most of them are taken through filtered light!
The best thing to filter your light with is mist! If you have light being filtered through mist, you’re likely to come up with a rainbow at the right angle. As you can imagine, you’re most likely to achieve something like this on a rainy day or near waterfalls. You can also cheat and use a spray bottle! Make sure your light is coming through at the right angle or this tip won’t work.
Light filtered through a flower as it starts to pass behind the Olympic mountains on the horizon creating a golden glowy effect. That means that two things are filtering the light here, the mountains and the flower. This photo was taken at ISO 400 1/5000 f/2.8.
Utilize Golden Hour:
This is probably the most obvious tip. Use golden hour to your advantage. I find my favorite flares and rainbows have happened using sunrise and sunset lighting at golden hour while utilizing some of the above tips. With the sun lower in the sky, it’s a lot easier to filter the light in frame.
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Learning how to manipulate your lighting while shooting your photos can be tricky and challenging, but using it to your advantage is so rewarding. Obviously, lots of practice makes things easier so experiment as much as you can! Don’t feel bad if something doesn’t work for you the first, fifth, or even tenth time. I still have a hard time finding my sweet spot for colorful flares on my lens. I feel ridiculous when I’m bobbing around looking for it during a shoot and then other times I find it right away! Just keep practicing, photography is a journey.
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Hello I’m Caryn!
I’m a Pacific Northwest based adventurer and storyteller. I take a lot of photos, Zack takes a lot of videos, and together we try to bring our fun adventures to life to inspire you to go outside and have meaningful, unique outdoor adventures for yourself!