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What is this?


hershy314

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While the weather was nice I stepped outside and took some photos around where I live. When I got back home I was looking through some images and this one caught my eye. I have no idea what is in front of the door. It's an old store that closed down about 3 years ago. I can rule out camera movement cause for one I used a wireless remote and 2 the rest of the photo would look like the object in front of the door. I did have the shutter open for 25 sec so I could get some movement of the clouds. Didn't turn out the way I was hoping, may try again later. But for the life of me I can't figure out what is in front of the door. I have 5 other photos of this building from the same angle and none show this thing. Not saying paranormal I'm saying it's unexplained. At least for the time being.
Gano.jpg
 

dv8_fx

Retired Administrator
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I don't think it's anything to do with the paranormal.... lol.

But I wonder if it's got anything to do with the squiggly shapes on the left . Is that sun glare on the lower left corner?
 

Hoogle

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Looks like a smudge or scratch on an ND filter or any other kind of filter you may have on, Just assuming it is an nd as I cant see any other scenario of a 25 second exposure in daylight
 

MrToM

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I've done long exposure shots before that also had 'strange' squiggly intermittent lines on them similar to this.

Turned out it was light, (sunlight or street light), reflecting off car aerials....as a constantly moving object the lines where never 'uniform' as such....just completely random.

The long exposure meant the car was never seen but the bright reflection of course stuck out like a baboons backside.

Could it be that?

A baboons backside?

Regards.
MrTom.
 

MrToM

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Doesn't have to be a car......could have been an insect with shiny wings for example...

Regardless of 'what' the object was, it does certainly look like 'something' bright moved across the shot during those 25 seconds...

... maybe you entered 'The Twilight Zone'...????

Regards.
MrTom.
 

hershy314

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All I know is when I took the photo I didn't see anything in front of it other than the building. It is possible I missed something, my eyes aren't as good as they used to be. On a side note, just found out yesterday I need glasses. I don't know of any bugs that would be out when it's cold out, I know there are some but I think most prefer warm-ish weather.
 

Tom Mann

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It's definitely the ectoplasm of the deceased former owners leaving the store for the day to go a-haunting. If I were you, I would get the Ghostbuster squad there *immediately*, LOL.

On a serious note, my guess is that it was a piece of lint that momentarily stuck to the front of your lens (or protective filter), that wiggled around a tiny bit during the exposure, but came off afterwards. It looks like that shot was taken at a fairly wide angle zoom setting, and a very, very small aperture like f/22 or f/32. With such settings, the depth of field is enormous and even objects on the front of the lens start to be in partial focus, whereas with a wider aperture, they would be completely blurred out, so you never see effects like this.

If you go to Google Images, and search for {orbs in pictures}, you will see lots of examples of a related phenomena, except in this case, it's caused by a very short flash exposure lighting up rain drops, bugs etc in front of the lens (at more ordinary apertures and distances) ... kinda the opposite of artifacts resulting from a very long time exposure and narrow aperture. There are quite a few people who apparently are unconvinced and believe these really are alien presences, LOL.

Tom
 

ALB68

Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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What is that white strip on the roof above where the door is? Is that a piece of white gutter ? Looking at this in PS it looks like to me there was a reflection of some kind off that white object.
mystery.PNG
 

ALB68

Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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Don't know what that is, it's not in any other photo I took today of this place. Could be anything.

Your missing my point. The long white strip. It looks like a rain gutter to me. Probably metal. I think there is a reflection coming off of that and is your mystery object.
 

MikeMc

McGuru
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First and simple thought, Did you use a lens hood / shade ?

I'm seeing all sorts of reflections from the diap and angle of the sun, In my years of shooting a simple lens hood is one of your best tools....Impact and filter protection are standard, but the less light bouncing in the barrel and off the name ring will make a difference.....Tom Mann......any other thoughts ?
 

Tom Mann

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One trick that sometimes helps when you're trying figure out something like this is to first get a better white balance, and then greatly increase the saturation and local contrast. I did that for this photo (see attached), but, to be honest, it didn't point in any directions that haven't already been suggested. Specifically, since there is obviously lots of light bouncing around in that lens (flashing dashed black lines in the areas of obvious lens flare), that means that we can't exclude lens flare from being the cause of the weird smear of light by the door.

Of course, a lens hood *always* is a good idea, and if the sun is just outside the frame, sometimes one has to supplement the lens hood with your hand or a card held at arms-length in such a position that the lens is in its shadow.

As also pointed out, another source of anomalies like this are OOF bright objects (eg, specs of dust, insects, glints off of cars, etc.) anywhere from on the front of the lens/filter to many feet in front of that.

However, my current favorite theory is one that hasn't yet been mentioned: Ambient light enters the eyepiece (ie, in the reverse direction that it usually travels), and the foam or felt that is supposed to provide a light seal around the mirror when it's in the "up" position is old and crumbly, so a tiny amount of light gets past this point. If this happens, light enters the mirror box, makes a bounce or two and winds up hitting the sensor in some strange pattern. This is one of the reasons that higher end cameras often have an eyepiece shutter that you can use in such situations: http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00V/00VWcm-210925584.jpg

This problem occurs much more often when using strong ND filters, so the light entering the usual path (through the lens) is much weaker than normal, but the ambient light level is quite bright. This theory also explains the relatively sharp v-shaped structure inside of the smear -- a small pin-hole sized light leak will cast relatively sharp shadows.

BTW, a pinhole light leak in the bellows of view cameras can produce all sorts of weird patterns on the image, some of which look quite similar to the pattern in Hershy's photo.

Go to Google Images and search for "light leak bellows", and you will find images like these:
http://www.instantoptions.com/faqs/images/filmproblems/integral-lightleak2.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_vI0kN05tr...t5c/s1600/01Nov+-+800Z+-+Ikonta+520+A+011.jpg

Just my $0.02,

Tom M
 

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  • Gano-tjm01_exaggerated_features-ps03a_8bpc_sRGB_698px_wide-dashed_lines-for_gif.gif
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