LED lights - what causes this?

zendog

zendog

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Steve
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I took a picture of our Christmas tree and the lights look weird.
Everyone of them is surrounded by about twenty rays hence fuzzy look.
Given it was very low light the rest of the frame looks OK to me,

IMG_7644-2 by Stephen.Palmer, on Flickr
 
How do I make EXIF visible?

Shot at f6.3 1.6sec ISO 200 Sigma 35mm prime.

Thanks for the link Dan. After a quick read and I'm still a bit puzzled - it says you have to be up around f22
not f6
 
LEDs vary considerably in intensity to make them seem 'normal' for your eyes. For example blue LEDs are considerably brighter then green or red ones. They look the same to you but not your camera. The LEDs are considerably overexposed compared to the rest of the photo
 
Kaolin said:
Looks like overexposure, each light has saturated the sensor, if you want smaller pin pricks try upping the shutter speed.
Click to expand...

Seriously? How about grey little dots on black background. That would surely be a lot better.
 
35mm f/1.4 art? I count roughly 18 rays which indicates 9 aperture blades, which the 1.4 art has. The rays are visible outside the center earlier when the source point is smaller, i.e. at a wider aperture.
But there may be something else going on as well... when I look closely at the LED lights on my tree I can see numerous rays obviously visible. Maybe they are designed to do that? (or maybe my eyes are just that bad, but I've never had lasik)
 
An interesting thing about aperture blades vs rays they generate... if there is an odd number of blades it generates 2x rays per. But if it is an even number of blades it only generates 1 per (the other cancels out the opposite one).
 
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