Harnessing Light: Mastering Sunballs, Sunrays, and Sunbursts in Underwater Photography

Among the most coveted shots in underwater photography is the sunball—a radiant burst of sunlight captured from beneath the surface, where beams of light pierce the water column, creating dramatic contrasts between light and shadow. Perfecting sunball photography requires a strong grasp of light behavior underwater, composition, and technical precision.

Time and time again when I am on a boat with other divers discussing and sharing photos, it’s the sunball shots that cause people to gasp and ask how it was done. They are dramatic and powerful images that resonate with all divers as they tell the story of tropical warm seas much more than many other wide angle photos. They are images that take us back to the nostalgic thoughts we have about tropical diving.

This guide delves into the nuanced techniques for capturing sunballs, with insights from my time working on trying to perfect the technique in multiple locations and conditions all over the world. Whether you’re an experienced underwater photographer or looking to hone your sunball technique, mastering these steps will elevate your underwater portfolio.

Understanding Sunballs

A sunball is a circular burst of light, typically captured when the sun is high in the sky and its rays are streaming through the water. Due to the physics of light, water refracts and diffuses sunlight, creating an intense bright spot on the surface while casting shafts of light below.

The aesthetic appeal of sunballs lies in their ability to add dynamic contrast to an image, enhancing the mood and depth of an underwater scene. However, photographing sunballs is not just about pointing your camera toward the surface. The interplay between light, water clarity, and your camera settings requires meticulous attention.

Understanding Sunrays

Sunrays add a unique, ethereal quality to underwater photography, offering depth and atmosphere that elevates an image. Unlike sunballs, which are focused bursts of sunlight, sunrays are the visible beams that cascade through the water column, interacting with the environment.

Sunbeams come from different angles and have different strengths depending on the time of day and the angle of the sun, but they add a special dynamic to the bluewater parts of your images.

Key Challenges of Sunball Photography

1. Overexposure: The biggest challenge in capturing a sunball is avoiding overexposure. The sun is an extremely bright light source, and when shooting directly at it underwater, it’s easy to blow out the highlights, turning your sunball into an unappealing white blob.

2. Dynamic Range: Balancing the bright sunball with the darker underwater environment can test the limits of your camera’s dynamic range; it will push your strobe power to its limits.

3. Backscatter and Haze: If you’re not in pristine conditions, particles suspended in water can scatter light, diminishing the clarity of the sunball and adding unwanted haze to your image. This is especially prevalent when shooting in strong sunlight and using strobes on high power.

4. Lens Flare: Shooting directly into the sun often leads to lens flare, which can add or detract from the final image depending on how it’s handled.

5. Focus: it can be hard for even the widest lens to autofocus when shooting directly into the sun.

6. Viewfinder: When shooting directly into the sun, especially on a new mirrorless camera it can be hard to see the scene properly as the dynamic range is so vast. On a mirrorless camera you have a choice if you use settings effect or not. When using settings effect all of your subject will look like a silhouette, and then you use the viewfinder to manage the sunball/sunrays. This is my preferred method, but many people prefer to turn off the settings effect and see more of the scene. This makes it more akin to a traditional DSLR viewfinder. There are many advantages of shooting with an Electronic View Finder, but for me shooting directly into the sun is their weakness.

Techniques for Capturing Perfect Sunballs

1. Optimal Timing, Location and Depth

Sunball photography is most effective in clear water with minimal particulate matter. Tropical locations with excellent visibility, such as the Red Sea, the Maldives, or Caribbean waters, are ideal environments. Water clarity is crucial, as suspended particles can scatter light and introduce backscatter.

In addition to having bright clear water, depth is paramount. The deeper you go the less clarity and sharpness the sunrays have. Also as you go deeper, the sunball itself will begin to have an unusual color cast created as it turns from its natural yellow to a more blue tone. Typically when shooting sunballs and sunrays I like to keep at a depth of 10m (30ft) or less, and usually much less.

Surface conditions are also important. The calmer the surface the more defined everything will be, so shooting sunballs on those flat calm days are best.

The time of day plays a significant role as well. The best times for capturing sunballs are typically:

• Midday to Early Afternoon: When the sun is at its highest point in the sky, the sunlight penetrates the water directly, creating a more defined sunball. This is the optimal time for shooting strong sunballs and rays directly from above.

• Early Morning or Late Afternoon: These times provide softer, more diffused sunlight but are less likely to yield a clean, bright sunball. However they are some of my personal favorite times to shoot as they offer a different color to the light with soft dappled rays through the surface coming in at a pleasing angle.

2. Controlling Exposure

The key to capturing a properly exposed sunball is striking a balance between the brightness of the sun and the surrounding underwater environment and any foreground that you choose to light artificially.

• Use of Small Apertures (High f-stop): A smaller aperture (f/16 or higher) is necessary to prevent the sun from overpowering the scene. A high f-stop reduces the light entering the lens, preventing the sun from becoming an indistinct white mass. The higher the f-stop, the more defined the sunball will be. A small aperture also enhances depth of field, keeping more elements in focus, which is particularly beneficial when framing the sunball with other subjects.

• Shutter Speed: The shutter speed should be adjusted to manage the exposure of the sunball. A faster shutter speed (e.g., 1/250^th or faster if your synch speed allows) can help control the brightness, but going too fast can make the blue water part of the image too dark. I usually set to 1/250 for sunlight in bright environments.

• ISO Settings: Use a low ISO (50-100) to minimize noise and reduce the sensitivity of the sensor to light, which helps in preventing overexposure of the image highlights.

 Example Settings:

• Aperture: f/16 or faster

• Shutter speed: - 1/250^th or higher

• ISO: 50-100

Note: For all users with modern cameras that have excellent dynamic range, shooting in RAW is essential. This allows more flexibility in post-processing to recover details from both the shadows and highlights, crucial when dealing with the high contrast of sunball images.

3. Positioning, Framing and Lighting Foreground

a. Subject Placement

When incorporating sunballs into your composition, consider the placement of your subject. Shooting wide-angle is critical. To add depth and intrigue to the scene, use the sunball as a backdrop to a large, foreground subject like a diver, a wreck, or marine life (e.g., a turtle or shark). The sunball adds dramatic lighting to the image, while the subject in the foreground provides context and scale.

You can either line the subject directly in front of the sun ball creating a natural backlight effect, or place the sunball in a corner of the scene. Hiding the center of the sunball can be a good way to balance the exposure in the frame by reducing the main highlight and still maintaining the natural sunrays.

When using a separate foreground subject and such extreme settings in the camera you are first of all going to need to get as close as possible to the subject as you can to be able to get enough light on it, so use a super wide lens such as a fisheye. Also, you will need to use strong and powerful strobes such as Retra Pro Max and have them on full power with no diffusers. When shooting in this way you need for your strobe power to be able to out compete the sunlight.

b. Positioning and Managing the Sunball

When the sunball is too powerful you need to manage its position in the frame. I often only shoot part of the sunball, cutting off the main part I try to just have the corner of the ball in the frame or the bottom edge, maintaining the sunrays but removing the full harshness of the sunball itself.

c. Vertical Composition

When capturing sunballs, vertical compositions tend to work well, especially when you have interesting foreground subjects like corals, divers, or animals that complement the light source. When using a vertical composition you will naturally be holding your camera with the bottom strobe much closer to the subject than the top strobe, so aim to have the bottom strobe 1 stop or so lower in power than the top strobe so you balance the artificial light across the frame.

4. Minimizing Backscatter and Lens Flare

Backscatter is the bane of underwater photographers, and when shooting towards the sun, its effects are amplified. Here are ways to minimize it:

• Use Strobes or External Lighting Carefully: While strobes can illuminate your subject, you need to be careful of placement and power. Use the minimum power you can to light the scene evenly and try to only throw light onto the subject and not into the water column.

• Proper Strobe Positioning: Keep your strobes wide and behind the plane of your lens to avoid lighting up particles directly in front of the camera. Read our article on strobe placement for more information. Your strobes should be on either side of your dome port but level with your ears when shooting, the closer you come to the scene the closer they should get to the dome port.

• Lens Flare Mitigation: Certain lens coatings and using dome ports can help reduce lens flare, though some flare can add to the ethereal quality of the image. Also some lenses such as the Tokina 10-17mm fisheye can have a tendency to leave a reflection on the inside of the dome port because they have white markings on the lens barrel. You can mitigate this by putting black electrical tape onto these markings.

5. Post-Processing Techniques

Post-processing is crucial for polishing your sunball shots. Since you are often dealing with high-contrast images, it’s almost impossible to perfect the exposure directly in-camera. Here are some tips for editing:

• Recovering Highlights and Shadows: In programs like Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, you can pull back blown-out highlights and open up shadows. Careful adjustments to the highlights slider will allow you to recover the overexposed sunball, while raising the shadows will bring out details in the underwater environment.

• Dehaze and Clarity: To remove the haze that often results from suspended particles, you can use the dehaze and clarity sliders in post-processing software. However, be careful not to overdo it, as excessive use can introduce noise and make your photo look like a poorly executed HDR image.

• Color Correction: Sunballs tend to washout colors, so adjusting the white balance to restore the natural blues of the water and the vibrant colors of marine life is essential. Consider adding warmth to balance out the blue tones introduced by the water.

6. Advanced Techniques: Sunbursts and Sunrays

Once you’ve mastered capturing clean sunballs, you can start experimenting with more advanced techniques:

• Sunbursts: To achieve a sunburst effect (where the sun’s rays are more pronounced), use a high f-stop and make sure the sun is partially obstructed by a reef, coral, or another subject. This technique gives you the iconic “star” appearance of the sun.

• Sunrays: Capturing the sun’s rays streaming downwards is about being in the right conditions. Water clarity, the angle of the sun, and the depth at which you’re shooting all play a part. Positioning yourself at the correct depth to capture the rays penetrating through the water column is crucial.

• Black and Whites: Black and white images suit scenes where there is a high dynamic range between highlights and shadows. Sunray and sunball shots naturally offer this and make for compelling edits in post. When using a mirrorless camera it can be fun to shoot it in black and white mode directly into the sun.

Conclusion

Photographing sunballs is both an art and a science. While the technical aspects of controlling exposure, managing light, and minimizing backscatter are challenging, the results are immensely rewarding. A well-executed sunball shot can add drama, scale, and a sense of wonder to your underwater portfolio.

To refine your technique, keep experimenting with various settings and compositions, and always strive for the clearest water and best lighting conditions. With practice, you’ll develop the skills to capture sunballs that not only reflect the beauty of the underwater world but also tell a compelling visual story.