Photo artifact or something else?

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0L USM

10/16/2005 04:59:52 PM · #1

I was looking through my old photos that I was going to but never did enter into challenges, and noticed something wierd in this one. In the upper left corner theres 3 lights that seem to get progressively brighter from left to right. Are these artifacts or did I catch something in my photo and never notice it before?

Rikki

Canon EOS-20D

10/16/2005 05:02:07 PM · #2

Maybe artifacts of dust specks that just got madnified with the long exposure. Not so sure but they do look like three shooting stars :)

Sony 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 E-mount

10/16/2005 05:24:55 PM · #3

I thought maybe a few small meteors too but I wanted to check if this maybe was a common thing in night shots with bright lights. It was a 5 second exposure and it looks like they were moving, but in 5 seconds dust particles would move more than that. Or if they were on the lens there would be no movement at all. Thanks for your help though, now I wish I would have seen it when I took the photo and taken a better shot of it.

jmsetzler

Sony Alpha a6000

10/16/2005 05:38:56 PM · #4

I think it's some very minor lens flare.. it's not uncommon when shooting into a light source... especially with a wide angle lens.

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro

10/16/2005 05:43:59 PM · #5

Originally posted by jmsetzler:

I think it's some very minor lens flare.. it's not uncommon when shooting into a light source... especially with a wide angle lens.

You could be right, it does seem odd how they seem to look identical except for brightness and that they're evenly spaced

Nordlys

Canon EOS R10

10/16/2005 06:27:56 PM · #6

The pattern doesn't look like it would be from lens flare (though the faint circle near the top in the center probably is), and I would highly doubt that they're meteors.

The lights are along line, but the faint left one is a little closer to the center one than the bright one on the right. The brightness and positioning seems consistent with an airplane with a blinking light headed away and to the left. Do you know if there's an airport nearby?

Nordlys

hardwaybets

Apple iPhone 11 Pro

10/16/2005 06:31:21 PM · #7

falling star...

kirbic

Canon EOS R5

Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8 L IS

10/16/2005 06:34:52 PM · #8

They are "ghosts" of the lights at lower right. These ghost images result from internal reflections in the optical system, and the giveaway is that they appear opposite the optical axis from the primary image (the primary image is lower right, they are upper left).

Nordlys

Canon EOS R10

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro

10/16/2005 06:56:18 PM · #9

Originally posted by kirbic:

Then why are the ghosts "beamed", why are they spaced a bit wider than the lights in the bottom, and why are there no other ghosts from any of the other lights? :-)

Nordlys

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

10/16/2005 07:14:05 PM · #10

Originally posted by Nordlys:

It can't be from an airplane. First, an airplanes lights are white or red. Second, they would all be the same brightness if that were the case. An airplane can't travel far enough in 5 seconds for the light to get that much dimmer.

PhilipDyer

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

10/16/2005 07:27:37 PM · #11

I agree with Kirbic, though this is an odd case because of the "beaming" you describe, Nordlys. The reason it would only be from those three lights is because these ghosts only occur in bright lights near the edge of the photo, not in the middle. The ghost lights do seem to coincide exactly with those three lights, which makes it highly likely that this is all we're seeing. But this is the first time I've seen them show up as narrow beams of light, rather than slightly flattened opaque circles. Very interesting effect.

I just noticed there's actually one in the top right as well, slanted in the opposite direction, probably from a light at the lower left.

Originally posted by Nordlys:

Originally posted by kirbic:
They are "ghosts" of the lights at lower right. These ghost images result from internal reflections in the optical system, and the giveaway is that they appear opposite the optical axis from the primary image (the primary image is lower right, they are upper left).

Then why are the ghosts "beamed", why are they spaced a bit wider than the lights in the bottom, and why are there no other ghosts from any of the other lights? :-)

Nordlys

GeneralE

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

Canon 12x IS USM (S3 IS built-in Lens) -- 36-432mm (35mm EQ)

10/16/2005 07:35:18 PM · #12

The difference in the reflected images if from the different shapes of the lenses; usually there are several acutal lenses of varying curvature within a "lens" as we think of it. It is somewhat analogous to the "generational loss" you get as you make a copy of a copy of a copy ....

My guess as to why it shows up there is the large flat dark area. I bet bright lights often produce ghost images which are subsumed within the much-brighter detail of a more typical image.

bigfish

Nikon D80

10/16/2005 07:35:38 PM · #13

Originally posted by jmsetzler:

I think it's some very minor lens flare.. it's not uncommon when shooting into a light source... especially with a wide angle lens.

I would have to agree I think I have had this in one of my long shutter shots at night and that was what I thought it was.

Message edited by author 2005-10-16 19:36:55.

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 USM

10/16/2005 07:56:07 PM · #14

Well thanks everyone for helpin me figure it out. It didn't match any artifacts or lens flares or anything I've seen in my photos before so I really would have had no clue as to what it was.

rox_rox

Canon EOS-20D

10/16/2005 08:55:58 PM · #15

I got something very similar last night.

I know it's a coincidence, but at the exact time I was exposing my shot my husband, who was doing astrophotography about 20 yards to the left shouted excitedly that a meteor had landed in the field right in front of us.

He says that the meteor was very low and came from such a direction that it probably crossed my image frame, travelling almost parallel to the ground.

Is it possible that this blue streak was the meteor?

Message edited by author 2005-10-16 20:57:19.

ShorterThanJesus

Nikon D300

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D

10/16/2005 09:10:08 PM · #16

The blue streak looks almost like lense flare and the fact that it lines up curiously well with a very bright light (not sure what that is) would convince me of that.

Unless the meteor happened to be travelling on the same path and its light is just lost in the brightness of that other object, I would lean towards lense flare.