Lens Flare

[jon72]

Hello,



I do quite a bit of night shooting, and I’m getting a heck of a lot of lens flaring with my new 70-200 2.8L IS when shooting scenes yielding varying degrees of ambient artificial light. I can occasionally see the flaring through the viewfinder, other times not until I view the image in DPP. Is this a characteristic of this lens? Could it be a defect?

[KennyG]

Are you using a filter?

[jon72]

No filter. Should I use a polorizer?

[jon72]

That would be "polarizer." ;)

[tim]

A polarizer won't help, it cuts down reflected light. There's not much you can do about it, except try a different lens, and that's a pretty nice lens so I don't think you're going to find anything a lot better.

You are using the lens hood, right?

[KennyG]

No. The reason for the filter question is they can often cause flare. Always shoot with the hood on. No lens is totally flare free and you have to think about light sources/angles for the shot. Post an example of what you are gettng

[ddelallata]

What I do to see if any flare will show up is press on the Depth of Field Preview before taking the pic when I supspect that flare will show up. This makes the diaphragm close to the selected aperture and makes the light bounce around differently inside the lens than when the diaphragm is wide open before taking the shot. Try it out next time.