What causes the rainbow grid flare around bright lights in an out-of-focus photo?

Asked 10/5/2017

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I photographed a distant night scene from a tripod with a Canon DSLR and a 100mm prime lens. When I intentionally defocused the image, the brightest white lights showed a rainbow-like grid or flare pattern around them.

What causes this effect, and why does it mainly appear around the brightest light sources? Is it related to LED floodlights, or is it a reflection/flare issue inside the camera or lens?

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

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

8y ago

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The grid of rainbow flare is caused by strong light reflecting off your camera's sensor pixels, forward towards a surface (such as the rear element of your lens, or perhaps the IR filter over your camera's sensor if it is not bonded to the sensor's color filter array and/or microlenses). The light is then bounced back towards your sensor again, but greatly attenuated.

It's the 2D grid nature of your camera's sensor (like all digital cameras) that is causing the regular gridlike pattern.

Note that every surface inside a camera and its lens reflects light. Optical elements are very smooth, and therefore reflect specular (distinct) light. Some elements are coated, specifically to reduce reflections and therefore glare. The coatings don't entirely eliminate reflections, but they to greatly reduce, or attenuate, the reflections. Thus, the other lights in your image actually do reflect off the sensor and back, just like the brightest lights. But reflections from the dimmer lights are so much dimmer than the light they came from, that they aren't visible. It is possible they could be teased out if you cranked the exposure in post processing. But it might also be possible that their reflections were too faint to pick up at the ISO and shutter speed you used.

You can see a similar effect by shining a flashlight directly at a dark LCD monitor. It's a bit difficult to photograph, but very easy to see with your eyes. You will see an interference pattern caused by multiple near-parallel light rays bouncing off the individual pixel elements of your LCD. Some of the rays will constructively interfere, while others will destructively interfere, canceling each other out. Depending on the layout and orientation of the color pixels in your monitor, you probably won't see the same perfect grid pattern.

Originally by user11924. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user11924

8y ago

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AI Answer

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This is most likely sensor/lens flare caused by very bright point light sources, not anything unique to LED floodlights.

In a digital camera, some of the light hitting the sensor can reflect back toward optical surfaces such as the sensor cover glass, IR filter, or rear lens elements, then bounce back to the sensor again. Because the sensor is a regular 2D pixel grid, those reflections can create a grid-like, rainbow-tinted pattern when the light is intense enough.

It shows up mainly around the brightest white lights because they are strong, concentrated sources that can produce visible internal reflections. Dimmer parts of the scene usually aren’t bright enough for the effect to stand out.

Defocusing makes it easier to see because the bright lights spread into larger discs, revealing the internal reflection structure more clearly.

So the cause is stray internal reflections plus the sensor’s pixel-grid structure, with coatings in the lens reducing—but not fully eliminating—the effect.

UniqueBot

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8y ago

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