- Hey guys, welcome to Travel Feels.
Today I'm gonna show you
how to get perfect lens flares every time.
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I love lens flares, lens flares are a really cool look,
I think, but a lot of lenses these days
don't actually produce very nice lens flares
and even if they do have a nice lens flare,
you have to sacrifice composition a lot of times
to actually get that lens to flare.
So how do you get perfect lens flares?
Easy, add them in post.
There's a ton of different lens flares and light leaks,
that you can find on the internet
and usually they're just video files,
that you put over top of your footage
and you can actually even make your own lens flares,
just using your own camera.
Now, it takes a lot of experimenting
to make the lens flares yourself,
but basically you just take off the lens,
film a black background and shine a light into the sensor.
You can use things like glass or anything
to kind of modify and make different kinds of looks.
It's pretty simple, but it is actually pretty hard
to get really nice-looking lens flares
or light leaks doing it yourself, but it is an option,
if you don't have any files or you don't wanna pay for some.
But for this tutorial, I'm gonna be using
Lens Distortion's Light Pack.
These are really nice lens flares and light leaks,
that you can just add right on top of your footage
and they're just really organic, high-quality,
nice-looking lens flares, so I highly recommend these,
if you don't already have some lens flares yourself.
So once you have your lens flare,
either you've bought one or you've made one yourself,
you basically just look at the clip and figure out
what kind of lens flare fits that clip best.
So really what you're looking at
is where's the sun or the light coming into that frame.
If it's coming in on the right side,
make sure you choose a lens flare,
that comes from the right side,
if your light is coming from the left side,
make sure you have a lens flare,
that comes from the left side.
Once you have your lens flare selected,
you just drag it and drop it right on top of the video clip
and choose the Blending Mode screen.
Resize the lens flare, then what I like to do
is I like to adjust the look of the flare,
adjusting the contrast and the colors
to match the scene much better
and there you go, boom, it's ready, easy as that.
I like to fade them in and out
to make them look as natural as possible,
so if I'm, for example, going over this ridge here,
I'm gonna fade it in right as soon as we see the sun
and bring in that nice lens flare for a little bit
and here's a before and after
of some of the shots in that edit
and you can see what a difference the lens flare has made,
it really changed the whole look of the edit
and made it look much more sunny and bright
and just added those really nice pops.
I think the lens flare really
took this edit to the next level.
Now, these aren't gonna be something,
that you're gonna be using on every single film,
but if they fit your storyline
and they make your footage look better,
then go for it, add the lens flares
and take your videos to the next level.
But whatever you do, try to make them
look as natural as possible.
For example, in this shot I brought the light leaks
coming in and out on the left side,
because I thought that it could play off the sun
coming through the trees in and out into the camera,
but if I were to, for example
put a lens flare on the right side,
it just wouldn't have fit, because it doesn't make sense,
there's no sun or light coming in from that direction.
Here again, the shot looked a little bit flat
and the sun is coming in from the right side,
so I decided to add a little bit of volumetric light,
which is really just a soft lens flare,
that just flares out the whole side of the frame.
Lens flares like this can also be used
as really nice transitions and how you do this
is use the brightest point of the lens flare
and you put it right where the edit point is.
That way the lens flare kind of hides that edit
and just makes it much more smooth.
Now, these transitions aren't gonna be so realistic,
but they can be a really cool effect
to use on some of your films.
So that's it, the easy way to get perfect lens flares
in every single video.
If you enjoyed this video, make sure to hit that Like button
and guys, enjoy the filmmaking process
and go get some of those Travel Feels.
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