Download Free Lens Flares

Download 35 Free Lens Flare Overlays for Video

Get 35 free lens flare overlays for your video edits with these completely free packs. Add them all to your collection of video assets.

You probably saw them in movies. You also saw them while shooting your own videos. Yes, we mean lens flares. In our story we will talk about what lens flares are and how to use them as overlays in videos to add production value to your work. We will also provide 21 completely free lens flare overlays. Let’s dive into the topic of lens flares and get some good stuff for free.

What is a Lens Flare?

Lens flares occur when a source of light that is not part of the image or scene you’re capturing enters the lens. The source of light can be anything: the sun, a lamp, fire, or even a flashlight. Any source of light directed to the camera can produce lens flares.

You can recognize a lens flare by a recognizable pattern of circles and lines in the picture. They can also represent lines across the screen when you watch sci-fi or fantasy films. Such effects are usually present when shooting with anamorphic lenses. Here is an example of a lens flare on the black background.

Lens flares are not bad if used properly. They contribute to the atmospheric effect and help create impressive scenes. They enhance torches, flashlights, headlamps in your footage. They also help enhance the effect of the sun in a video scene. The scorching desert sun will get a more vivid effect with some real lens flares added in post-production. Lens flares also help enhance lights and light reflections on objects. Think of the surface reflections on spaceships flying through the space.

Adding lens flares as overlays in post production is a rule of thumb these days. You can always shoot your own, or you can get numerous lens flares online: gold, blue, cinematic flares – they are all within reach. There are free and paid options. Here is our list of free stuff.

Download Free Lens Flare Overlays

Now we got to our free lens flare collection. We have over 20 free assets that you can download with one click. From regular overlays to anamorphic lens flares, you will find it all in this list of free collections. They are all quality lens optical flares ready to use in your video edits. Well, use them all to achieve those impressive visual effects that you can only see in films.

You can use lens flares in both photography and video, but our free collection is meant for video making. You can use the free stuff below in Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, or any other NLEs that allow using third-party overlays.

Two Lucent Zoom Free Lens Flares

We partnered up with Shutterstock Elements to share 2 free lens flares from their Lucent Zoom collection (get 15% off w/ promo code: FFF15). You can download the two free assets right here (on our site). Try them in your personal and commercial projects. The two free samples are 4K .mp4 files ready to drop in your timeline. If you like the quality of the flares, you can get the whole collection here.

17 Free Anamorphic Lens Flares

PremiumBeat, a popular royalty-free music site, has a free collection of lens flares out for grabs. Download their 17 free assets here. You can use these assets in any type of projects without attribution. Pretty amazing stuff!

One Free Lens Flare

This tutorial on PremiumBeat includes a video folder that hosts 2 video files. One of them is a free lens flare from the Radium collection on Shutterstock. That’s another one to add to your collection of free assets for video.

Free Lens Flare from Motion Array

Motion Array has several free lens flares in their collection of free video assets. Check out this free lens flare that you can download for free. You will need to sign in or create a new account to download the freebie.

15 God Ray Light Overlays

Here is another cool free collection of light overlays. It comes again from PremiumBeat. This collection includes 15 god ray light overlays that you can download for free. These god rays were captured in a controlled studio environment so as to create a crisp realistic look. The free light overlays are easy-to-use. You need to bring them into your favorite NLE and layer them over your footage. Then adjust the blend mode, and you should be all done.

How to Use Lens Flare Overlays

Using lens flare overlays is straight-forward. Even though it’s easy, you don’t want to use too many of them in your video project. Covering your video scenes with lens flares may create distractions for the viewer. So use them sparingly. Your story should always stay in the center. Lens flares are just nice addons to enhance your footage.

Lens flares can help with different use cases. For example, lens flares can serve as interesting and elegant transitions. Time and cut the scenes in a way where lens flare transitions communicate something. Whether these are emotional transfers or hidden hints, use lens flares to enhance that feeling in your transitions.

Since lens flare overlays are usually video files, .mp4 or .mov, you can customize them in our NLE. Play around with the color and color grade to match your video scenes.

You can use Additive or Screen blending modes and also add lens flares to an adjustment mode. Take a look at this tutorial from Shutterstock where they cover the basics of using any lens flare overlays in Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro.

Conclusion

These modern lens flares that are completely free will help you enhance your video scenes. Use these stock video assets to achieve impressive video effects for both personal and commercial videos. From high-end lens flare assets given away as samples to free files, you can build a solid collection of lens flares to use whenever the moment is right.


Need more light elements for your videos? Here are our free collections you’d like to explore:

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