Sunstar Photography: Crisp Sunstars With the Tamron 12-20mm

"How do you get those cool sunstars?"

I get that question more than almost any other, and it came up again after I posted a few frames from a sunflower field the first part of October. A few people also asked how good the Tamron 12-20mm is at sunstars. Short answer: very good. The longer answer is mostly about where you stand and what you put in front of the sun, so let me walk through how I did it.

A sunflower field at golden hour

The frames came from Hubert Family Farms in New Market, Alabama. I went out for the last hour of light, when the sun sits low and the flowers turn toward the warm side of the sky.

I did not shoot from standing height. I got down low, close to one sunflower, and let the rest of the field fall away behind it. At 12mm the lens takes in a lot of sky and a lot of field, so the flower closest to me became the hero and the rows behind it became the setting.

Then I waited for the sun to touch an edge. That is the whole trick. When the sun is just clipped by something solid, the star tightens up. When it is floating in open sky, it turns into a big soft blob.

How to photograph sunstars, simply

Sunstar photography comes down to a few things working together. None of them are complicated.

Stop down. A sunstar comes from light diffracting around the aperture blades. Small apertures make sharper, more defined points. I shot this series at f/16. Somewhere between f/11 and f/16 is a good place to start on most lenses.

Put the sun on a hard edge. Tuck the sun right at the edge of something: a petal, a tree line, a fence post, the horizon. Let only a sliver of it show. Move your feet an inch at a time until the star snaps into shape. This makes a bigger difference than any setting.

Go low and wide with a strong foreground. An ultra-wide lens makes whatever is closest to you look big and important. Give it something worth looking at. In a sunflower field that is easy. Anywhere else, look for a rock, a flower, a branch, or a line that leads into the frame.

Keep the shutter honest. At f/16 near sunset, the shutter will often slow down on its own. My exposure was 1/8 of a second at ISO 100. Hold steady, brace yourself, or use a tripod if you have one with you. If a breeze is moving the flowers, take several frames and keep the sharpest.

Watch the flare. Shooting straight into the sun will bring some flare. Shade the front of the lens with your hand if you need to, and check the back of the camera after each frame.

Why the Tamron 12-20mm works for this

I am a Tamron ambassador, so take that into account, but this lens has earned its spot in my bag for this kind of work. The 12-20mm F/2.8 is small enough to get right down into a field, and at 12mm it gives me room for both the hero flower and a wide sky. Stopped down to f/16, it draws a clean, defined sunstar without much fuss.

It is not the only lens that can do this. The technique carries over. But if you like the low, wide, sun-in-the-frame look, it is a lens worth trying.

Gear and settings

• Camera: Nikon Z6 III

• Lens: Tamron 12-20mm F/2.8

• Focal length: 12mm

• Aperture: f/16

• Shutter speed: 1/8 sec

• ISO: 100

• Location: Hubert Family Farms, New Market, Alabama

• Light: golden hour into sunset

If you try this, start with the edge. Find something solid, slide the sun up against it, stop down, and get low. The star will show up.