This trick will help you to quickly add lens flares to your drone photos, to mimic that cinematic ‘sun in your lens’ effect ?
But first of all, when you shoot against the sun, be sure to underexpose your photo, in order to capture as much of the highlights as possible. Use the AEB 5x technique for even more dynamic range! If you don’t know what AEB is, read my post about drone photography tips 😉
Now when you are done working on your photo in Lightroom, your photo will look something like this:
There’s a nice golden glow going on, but it’s still missing that magical touch. We are looking directly at the sun. What if you could add some lens flares to your drone photos? To give it that cinematic look you often see in movies as well. That would certainly improve the overall picture.
It’s totally possible and easy to do! I personally use the app Lens Distortions to create this effect, after I’m done in Lightroom. They have several free lens flare effects you can use. The trick is to then adapt the settings to match your photo. In this case I decreased the brightness and opacity, increased the contrast and then changed the temperature and color more towards the orange I already had in my image.
And the final result can be seen below: (move the slider left-right)
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What do you think about the final result? Does it look more cinematic to you? Let me know in the comments below 🙂
And if you found this quick drone tip useful, be sure to check my tips for better drone photos in the snow as well 😉
