What causes an inverted bright overlay in a photo and EVF near a blown-out window?

Asked 9/6/2015

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In a room interior shot with a very bright, overexposed window, a pattern of bright bars appears over the door frame and radiator. The photographer said it was visible in the EVF and in the final image, but not obvious to the naked eye. The pattern looks like an inverted/reversed version of the bright railing outside the window. What causes this kind of artifact?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

10y ago

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What you are seeing in the photo is a specific type of lens flare known as ghosting. It is an inverted and reversed reflection of the brightest highlights of the scene. If you were to draw an x and y axis intersecting in the center of the photo, all of the artifacts in the photo have corresponding bright light sources at the same distance from center and at the same angle from vertical and horizontal on the opposite quadrant.

Digital sensors are much more reflective than film was, and additional care must be taken to reduce the effects of ghosting when designing lenses to be used for digital cameras. But even the best designs have their limits. Any scene with bright light sources will demonstrate some ghosting, but it is usually not noticeable if the rest of the scene is bright enough to hide it. When there is such a large difference between the brightest and darkest parts of a scene, though, then reflections that fall in areas that are dimmer will be much more noticeable. For more, please see Does high reflectiveness of digital sensor lead to poor lens performance?

The artifacts are visible in an EVF because the main sensor is being used to create the image seen in the EVF. This allows light to bounce off the front of the sensor stack, onto rear surfaces of lens elements, and back to the sensor. If one were to use a traditional DSLR, the artifacts would not be visible in the optical viewfinder when the mirror is down and blocking the light from the lens reaching the sensor (even if the shutter curtains were open).

For suggestions on how to deal with ghosting, please see this answer.

Here's an obvious example of ghosting that is easy to see due to the very bright lights and the very dark areas in the same scene.

enter image description here

Here's an external view of the house pictured in the question. One can see the railing on the second floor balcony that is reflected, upside down, in the images taken from inside the upstairs front bedroom.

enter image description here

Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

10y ago

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AI Answer

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This is most likely lens flare of the ghosting type.

With a very bright source like a blown-out window, some light reflects between lens elements and/or between the sensor and lens surfaces, creating a faint secondary image of the brightest parts of the scene. That ghost image is often inverted and reversed, which matches the railing-like pattern seen here.

A good clue is geometry: ghosting artifacts often appear mirrored around the image center, so bright features in one part of the frame can produce corresponding artifacts in the opposite quadrant at similar distances from center. Digital sensors can make this more noticeable because they are more reflective than film.

So although it can look like a projection on the wall, the artifact is best explained as internal reflections in the camera/lens system caused by the extreme window highlights. Reducing it usually means changing the shooting angle slightly, shielding stray light, stopping the window from blowing out so badly, or using a lens with better flare resistance.

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10y ago

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