I've been telling artists for decades that it's not always the best idea to scale up a synthetic lens flare when the light source is moving closer to camera, which is typically met with resistance from the artist. "Of course it scales when the source moves closer!" is the usual response.
My white whale has been to find the perfect photographic reference for this phenomenon to back up my accurate claim, one that clearly illustrates my point. And I finally found it in the 1981 horror sequel, "Halloween II", photographed by Dean Cundey. In the in-camera shot, a police car with its headlights directly aimed at camera races toward the camera, and you can clearly see the iconic Panavision red ring flare element remains a consistent screen size while the lightbulb is racing toward camera.
To help convey this further, I stabilized the headlamp in screen space and made a fixed box around the red ring, illustrating the fact that even though the light source is hurtling toward camera and gets large in screen space, the lens flare elements do NOT scale commensurately.
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