Why does the sun look wonky?

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bronaldo

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I tried to line up this Canada Goose with the sun and reflection over a lake this morning. I like the photo, but the sun looks super weird to me, no matter what I do in post (I haven't tried reducing the clarity, but will do that in a bit). Is there something in camera that was done incorrectly? Is there a way to prevent this from occurring?
 
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bronaldo said:
tried to line up this Canada Goose with the sun and reflection over a lake this morning. I like the photo, but the sun looks super weird to me, no matter what I do in post (I haven't tried reducing the clarity, but will do that in a bit). Is there something in camera that was done incorrectly? Is there a way to prevent this from occurring?
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That looks like some pretty severe Chromatic Aberration giving you that strong red fringe around the sun. There also appears to be a lot of moisture in the atmosphere that probably isn't helping there. What lens were you using to capture this image and did you have a front filter in place?

Shooting directly into the sun or other bright light sources is a pretty big challenge for a lot of lenses but high end prime lenses tend to handle this fairly well where a lot of zoom lenses and unfortunately some of the otherwise great PF lenses like Nikon's 300mm, 500mm and 800mm PF lenses can struggle when shooting directly into a bright light source.

You may be able to reduce it in the Lens Correction tab in Lightroom or if you Google 'fixing Chromatic Aberration' you can find some good techniques that can help in Photoshop or other image processing tools.
 
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DRwyoming said:
That looks like some pretty severe Chromatic Aberration giving you that strong red fringe around the sun. There also appears to be a lot of moisture in the atmosphere that probably isn't helping there. What lens were you using to capture this image and did you have a front filter in place?

Shooting directly into the sun or other bright light sources is a pretty big challenge for a lot of lenses but high end prime lenses tend to handle this fairly well where a lot of zoom lenses and unfortunately some of the otherwise great PF lenses like Nikon's 300mm, 500mm and 800mm PF lenses can struggle when shooting directly into a bright light source.

You may be able to reduce it in the Lens Correction tab in Lightroom or if you Google 'fixing Chromatic Aberration' you can find some good techniques that can help in Photoshop or other image processing tools.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the detailed answer. I was using a Sony 200-600 with a 1.4x TC. No front filter. I will try to correct it manually in PS. The lens correction didn't do much.

Aside: Is it significantly damaging to my sensor to take shots like this? I don't do it very often, but sometimes I can't resist.
 
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When the sun is near or below the horizon, the rays of light from the sun travel from denser to the rarer medium(as earth's atmosphere is denser at the bottom and rarer at the top).when the angle of incidence is greater than critical angle, the light rays from the sun undergo total internal reflection and reach to the observer on earth.Due to this, the virtual image of sun is seen much more higher than horizon which looks flat or oval.

In fact, the flat image of sun is seen above the horizon when it is below the horizon. The sun is seen sometimes before it rises and for sometimes after it sets.

Got that by a quick Google.

What Dave said is probably more helpful.
 
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Ibrahim said:
When the sun is near or below the horizon, the rays of light from the sun travel from denser to the rarer medium(as earth's atmosphere is denser at the bottom and rarer at the top).when the angle of incidence is greater than critical angle, the light rays from the sun undergo total internal reflection and reach to the observer on earth.Due to this, the virtual image of sun is seen much more higher than horizon which looks flat or oval.

In fact, the flat image of sun is seen above the horizon when it is below the horizon. The sun is seen sometimes before it rises and for sometimes after it sets.

Got that by a quick Google.

What Dave said is probably more helpful.
Click to expand...

I know surprisingly little about the sun for someone who enjoys seeing it rise every morning :ROFLMAO:
 
Even here in Ohio we are noticing the impact from the fires in Canada. Where was this taken?
 
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