Now that my wedding season is underway I have been trying to shoot some setup footage of venues by shooting through a tree and getting a nice lens flare with the sun shining through the tree leaves. I like to dial down the iris/shutter to get a clean flare and make it sort of explode. Makes a nice transition point when editing. I also like to get a silhoutte of the happy couple with a well timed lens flare between their heads. Problem is the lens flare with the A1 is a white spot with a straight line going up and down. It doesn't flare into a nice round spot with beams coming out like I used to get with my old GL and VX/PD cams.

Is there a way to get those cool lens flares or am I doing something wrong.

Philip

Thought the really neat flares are accomplished as post production effects rather than in-camera?

They can be accomplished that way but it takes time and not everyone is an AE literate person. :-) I know enough about AE to be dangerous but wouldn't consider my self skilled.

I like the in camera flares I used to get that had the rays and nice appearance. Besides a good in cam flare looks way better that a computer generated one .... IMHO!

They only take a few moments to do in cam and are a great way to show the day was a bright sunny day.

Try a star filter in front of the lens? 4, 6, 8 or 10-pointed stars whenever you want them. Might have to go without I.AF, but for such a carefully crafted shot, you'll be in manual focus anyway...

Both Motion and Final Cut have keyframable lens flare generators that look nice if you can't get a good one in camera. This is also assuming that you have Final Cut Studio. I don't like to assume, it makes an ass out of Uma Therman.