This happens with some lenses at long exposures. There's not much done to these outside of the odd comp, but mainly a 'HDR' style grading. Good stuff, and relatively simple. Just looks intense!
No, it does not happen like this. Happens with _some_ light source, from _some_ angles. Barely ever on the edge of the lens and never without distortion there.
OK mate. I've got and done photographs supporting what I just said. But I'll concede, whatever.
May I see some of those photos? I'm genuinely curious what lens is capable of night flares on the edge without distortion; the only one I can think of is the Nikkor 50mm 1.2, considering it was designed for this. The Pentax 85mm 1.8, which is my closest to that lens certainly can't do this feat but in the center - it does spectacular nightscapes though.
Yes you may. They're raw renders from an online archive from photographs 10 years ago, so lets leave the artistic judgements aside.
Uhm... this only verifies what I was saying: they are not uniform. There are deformations, differences among them, as it should be. The opening post had basically the exact same flaring and it was obviously post production.
I don't think the color grading is uniform. The left/right or top/down split of blue/red in some images seems implausible at the source.