To Flare, or not to Flare??

[Ernest Burden III]

Lens flares are fine, if they are done correctly.

 

The obvious exception would be that sometimes--like in film work--you want to mimick a camera aberation. you're mating one image type into another. Fortunately the industry has gotten it right, and now movies look much better than even the first Jurrasic Park. CG is so well integrated these days that it goes un-noticed, as it should be.

 

Architectural rendering can do the same thing. But the playing field is more open. You do not have to pretend you are producing a photograph, though you certainly can do that. You can go in many artistic directions. But if I'm trying to do a watercolor look with a rendering I will not usually try to give the look of wrinkled paper, erasures to fix errors, or spilled paint. And so it is with lens flares. Most of the time. But not always.

[Christopher Nichols]

Interesting point Ernest, and point of good intellectual debate. Basically it comes down to reproduction what we are used to seeing.

 

Here are the steps I see:

 

1 - Architecture was rendered, traditionally, by hand. Since it is easier to drawn a two point perspective than a three point perspective. Tall buildings more often drawn with vertical lines even though it is impossible to photograph it that way. So much so, that people accepted this as THE way that building should be displayed (for architecture renderings only), as it looks wrong to most other photographers.

 

2 - Photography becomes a means to displaying architecture. Since many architectural photographer came from the world of architectural rendering, they became used to seeing vertical lines what are impossible to photograph. So perspective correction lenses are invented to warp the image mimic the familiar two point perspective. Actually large format camera can do it without special lenses, but by tilting the image plan from the lense.

 

3 - Computers come along. At first, the biggest advantage is that it can model and view buildings in a virtual three dimensional space. Now we can see the perspective quickly. Again the same problem happens, we need to invent a computer version of the perspective correction. The first sped that people do is to use the view to trace over a rendering. The computer is used as a perspective building machine.

 

4 - Rendering engines and computer speeds improve by leaps and bonds, allowing the user to mimic the way light truely works, reflection, diffuse bounce, even lens warping, high dynamic range images, etc.. all lead to what people call "Photorealsm." It may not be perfect, but it is the goal, and it gets more powerful everyday. The basic goal is to mimic that you would see if a phtograph was taken of the real space.

 

Why introduce a Lens Flare unless your goal is not photorealism?

 

BTW, just FYI, if a photographer would have taken a roll of photgraphs of the building and one of the photographs had a big old lense flare in it, he would have tossed that one out. That is me speaking as someone who spent a good amount of time in the architecture rendering and photography world. So your point about Lens Flare = bad is correct, if your goal is photorealism of a still architectural photograph.

 

One last point. Lense flares are generally more effective (and dramatic) in motion. That is me speaking as someone that works in feature films.