I rarely point my camera directly at the sun to take a photo unless there's something else in the frame that adds enough meaning to the composition to make it worthwhile.
In this case there was a striking path of light reflecting off the relatively calm surface of the sea which added that certain something that made me stop mid stroll and frame up this image.
So how to take a reasonable picture of the sun?
The first thing you need is clean optics. Fingerprints and other crud on your lens will give horrible flare effects. Think about driving into the sun with a dirty windscreen and you'll know what I'm talking about.
The next hint is to remove all filters. The more glass you have between the sun and the camera's sensor the more flare artifacts you'll generate. Some look pretty, some don't and filter artifacts don't.
Finally, use a small aperture (high f number) to give a well defined sunstar, unless, of course, you want to avoid this effect.
Filename - sun sea 01.jpg
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 45mm
Exposure - 1/160sec @ f22, ISO100
Location - Conway Morfa, North Wales
This image - 640x800px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - Small aperture used to give sunstar effect
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