Embrace the flare

I took the Ricoh GRII and wide angle attachment over to Italy a few weeks ago and with such a bulbous protrusion of exposed glass on the front of the camera it was clear I was going to have issues with flare - as it turned out many of the flared images actually looked quite good, so rather than cropping and spot removal I've left it alone.

See what you think...










oh - and this one doesn't have flare but was taken at the same place (Sirmione Castle on Lake Garda)...

Fantastic tones and colours in these.
I certainly wouldn't be bothered by the flare. Doesn't detract from the shot.
Great detail too.
2 3 and 4 for me.
Savage set.

Great shots with gorgeous colour, but I'm not too happy with the flare.

Lovely shots, but I have to agree with John regarding the flare.

I never made it to Sirmione, but did spend three nights in Riva del Garda a few years back. Wonderful part of the world.

I'd say it's OK in 1 but is defo distracting me in no. 2

Would love to see 2 without it!!

I don't mind a bit of flare, I recently posted up some Tornado images with flare on them myself.

Lovely location, where is that in Italy?

South Western end of Lake Garda. A short drive from Verona.

A beautiful place. and a gorgeous day. There doesn't seem to have been much loss of contrast from the sunlight entering the lens, so they are all good, strong shots IQ wise, apart from the flare obviously. I think I would have probably spent time with the clone tool myself.

I think the 2nd and last ones are really good!

Good strong compositions all round... very much your shout I'd say on the flare front...

Best

A very nice set of well composed shots.
Regarding the flare, very much a personal thing. The flare does not distract from the photographs for myself but, in my view, it is not strong enough or prominent enough to be an intrinsic part of the photograph. In other words they are good strong photographs that happen to have flare. I feel there is room to explore actively encouraging flare as part of the composition, it can be done very successfully. I notice they quite often do it on TV programmes including quite a bit at Wimbledon where at times they do shots that deliberately encourage flare as part of the scene.

Give me more!

Lovely images slightly spoiled by the flare but not excessively so as their quality overcomes this. I might think differently though if they were inferior images to start with.

Regards

Karlo

The flare is ok (IMO) for most of these; the one really annoying distracting bit is the pink blob on the top corner of the first image - that one I perosnally would be inclined to clone out