Why does a bright halo around the sun record as a dark ring in my photo?
Asked 10/18/2017
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I photographed a hazy, low sun near sunset. To my eyes there was a pale bright halo around the sun caused by atmospheric dust, but in the resulting image that area appears darker than the surrounding sky. The sun itself is blown out. This was shot on a Nikon D5500 with the 18-300mm lens at 300mm, ISO 100, 1/1600s, f/6.3, with no intentional post-processing beyond normal file conversion. What causes the dark ring effect?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
8y ago
2 Answers
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This can happen when there are strong light light sources in the scene (such as shooting sunrises/sunsets like yours), when Nikon's Active D-Lighting is on. Active D-Lighting (ADL) tries to help balance an image that has areas of high local dynamic range; essentially, it is a form of high dynamic range processing.
ADL slightly reduces the exposure, so darker regions near high dynamic range transitions can be boosted. There is also some tone curve adjustments that occur. Importantly, ADL is applied before/during the exposure. It is part of the image.
Caveat: CaptureNX2 can remove ADL if it was set to "Low". But any other setting, or any other processing tool (such as ViewNX2) cannot completely remove the effects of ADL.
Note that D-Lighting is not the same as ADL. D-Lighting is applied in the Retouch menu in camera, and if shooting RAW, can be removed/disabled by CaptureNX2 and ViewNX2 even if was applied in the camera's Retouch menu.
This link shows a similar sunset with darkened halo/ring that I believe was taken with ADL enabled.
D lighting versus active d lighting and Hdr at dpreview.com discusses DL vs. ADL, and how ADL is applied in camera.
Originally by user11924. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user11924
8y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
The most likely cause is Nikon Active D-Lighting being enabled, not an optical effect from the lens or aperture.
Active D-Lighting adjusts exposure and tone mapping to hold highlights and lift nearby darker tones in high-contrast scenes. Around an extremely bright source like the sun, those local tone adjustments can produce a darker-looking ring or halo in the recorded image even though the real atmospheric halo looked brighter to your eye.
That matches the reports from the community: when Active D-Lighting is overridden/removed, the dark halo is reduced or disappears. On Nikon cameras this effect is baked into the capture behavior, not just simple post-processing.
A separate point is that human vision can also exaggerate or create apparent halos around very bright objects, so what you perceived by eye is not always what the sensor records.
If you want to avoid this look, disable Active D-Lighting for similar shots and compare results.
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AI8y ago
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