Now I have to freely admit, I am not much of a night portrait photographer. I take night shots every now and then when i see something cool and I want to try it out. And then I pretty much forget about it.
One thing I was curious about was how to get starbusts from lights in your photos. Now you can get starbusts during the day as well, but I find it a little bit easier to do at night. To do it during the day you have to have light reflecting off of a surface like a shinny motorcycle tank or something similar.
In these pictures I simply took a picture of an ugly light post sitting outside my house.
I shot these with my Canon 7D and my Sigma 70-200 Ex DG OS lens. I shot it handheld, yes I know you should not take night shots handheld. But I was not trying to win any awards with these pictures I just wanted to see if I could accomplish the starburt effect.
I found it was extremely easy to do. So what is the secret. Set you aperture to at least f/16. That is it. Nothing special or tricky about it. I have not tried this with other lens or camera bodies so I can not say if other setups will require a slightly different camera setting. I took photos at f/16 and f/22 and found the effect to be very similar.
You will have to adjust your shutter speed and ISO accordingly to obtain the proper exposure.
A lot of cool effects you see in photographs do not require special equipment or any fancy tricks. Its just a matter of knowing what setting to put your camera at to achieve the desired effect.
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