We have a lively discussion in our german forums about the
sunball shots in digital photography.

Due to the technical limitations of digital cameras sunballs
have been hard to capture with digital cameras. Despite
the critique and due to the innovations in camera equipment
it is our belief that nice sunball shots are possible with current
equipment.

It’s time to get rid of this prejudice. I would like to see your best
sunball shots and start discuss them. If you have old non digital
images you are invited to scan it and post it here to challenge the
digital alternatives.

I have just attached some of my sunball shots.

cheers lars

PS: It would be great if you just upload the images as they were
taken from the camera without any modification. My images shown
here are just breezebrowser proofs from my RAW files.

and some more images

Lars

Great shots, love the column shot.  Looks like sunballs and digital is not a real issue for you anymore

Hey nobody else having good sunball shots? that can’t be?

/lars

Hey sunballs are of course possible.  I find putting a subject in front of the center of the ball saves the image from being blown out while exposing the rest of the image to a degree.
The camera acts similar to when you look up at the sun, your eyes squint letting less light into your retina, so everything around the sun is underexposed...err you know what i mean

Cheers!

These are some of the better shooting at the sun reulst that I got with an Olympus 3040z .. so this camera is like 6-7 years old.

It was a work horse for me and shot over 30,000 shots underwater in it’s lifetime, about 10,000 a year. Although I retired the
camera it still works and is sat comfortably with my dad. I think it is still just as good of a camera after 50,000 photos.

Anyway .. these are just for some comparison to modern images. Now it also isn’t always the camera. Most of these shots were
taken under perfect condition for sunballs. I was nice and deep, water was clear, surface a little ripply.

here are some more ..

now while my shots may show an improved ability of digital cameas to capture sunballs (which I believe they can perfectly)
the key here is to get a GREAT shot that was taken on film with a sunball.

The arguement has always been that digital can’t do what film can .. and sunball being the main strength of the arguement.

So anyone got any shots taken on film they think beat digital sunballs .. ?

Derek were those taken with a 300D or 400D ?

Yours and Lars reults seem similar ... so that makes sense as they are similar cameras

However your last two shark shots show the old compaint of the Blue abberation
around the sunball that looks unnatural.

Lars your lionfish appears to be the best result to me so far .. but like i mentioned it
is all to do with conditions in my mind .. any camera can get a good sunball if you have
the right conditions for it.

This is a huge debate .. and will probably carry on through time.

Wow Guys! Beautiful digital Sunballs Derek & Giles..
Thanks for sharing these here and your experience.

Here are my own two favorite photos about digital sunballs.