Weird Anomaly in a Sony Digicam Photograph

Hello All, I was visiting a friend who also happens to be a

photographer this past weekend. He'd just bought a brand new Sony DSC-

T1 digicam, mostly as a novelty to take pictures around the house.

Since he was new to digital, I suggested we try kicking up the ISO on

his camera to 400 to see how it did noise-wise. He did and snapped a

shot of the side of his house.

 

We didn't even pay much attention to it and moved on to snap some

other things. The next day, while looking at the shots in Photoshop

(I couldn't make this out in the thumbnail), I finally opened up the

pic and there it is - this strange ball, hanging in his yard, beside

his house. No, this thing is *not* really there! (I looked!) Except

for resizing, nothing was done to the pic - no levels, no curves,

nothing.

 

Has anyone out there seen anything like this? We joked about another

Bigfoot/Elvis siting, but you have to admit, it's rather strange,

isn't it? It sort of looks like a giant dandelion head, floating

beside his house.

 

No picture before or after has done this. The camera works fine.

Really, the only thing my friend did was manually crank up the ISO to

400 - which the camera probably would've done anyway since it was

getting close to dark. I just thought I'd share - I'll include a 100

percent crop of whatever it is too. Any comments welcome... Cue

Twilight Zone tune here . . .<div></div>

And here's the 100 percent crop<div></div>

Beau. Maybe it's a 'giant dandelion head, floating beside his house'

Its a ghost. Spooky.

I think it is a dandelion head, probably only 2-3ft from the camera - hence its apparent size relative to the rest of the scene and its out of focus appearance. Seems to be a good demonstration of AF limitations and shutter lag, and the inadequacy of LCD viewfinders...

<I>I think it is a dandelion head, probably only 2-3ft from the camera</i><BR><BR>I neglected to mention that I was standing at his side at the time this was taken and watched him press the shutter. We're both around 6 feet tall, just standing in the middle of his yard. There was no dandelion in the way of the shot, giant or not! I don't recall seeing any in his yard, either. I'm not implying that this is some supernatural phenomenon. It's probably some random error generated by one of the chips in his camera. It's not dead-center in the pic though, and it is rather uniform. I honestly cannot explain it and was just wondering if anyone else out there might've encountered something similar. I'm still scratching my head over it.

is the sun in front of you....looks like internal flare

LOL.. The sun had already set. Honest, this isn't a "guess how I did this trick!" post. Whatever this is, it was not there - at least visibly - when the shot was taken. We were maybe 15 feet away, both looking in the same direction. Took the pic, and saw absolutely nothing unusual until the next day, in Photoshop.

Grant, I wasn't laughing at your suggestion - in fact, I hadn't thought of that, but like I said, the sun had already gone down. I didn't mean to sound rude. In some ways, it's sort of amusing because it's so weird.

the trees look slightly flared in the background, thats why i said that....i still think its flare...

Well the flash did fire - it's one of those do-it-all for you digicams. So perhaps that had something to do with it. You'd have to see where my friend lives to understand the light; he's very much in the woods and lives only a mile from The Great Smoky Mtn National Park. On a sunny day, his yard might get a couple hours of sun, when it's directly overhead. If you could see past his yard, in the same direction, there are only woods and big trees all around.

It's weird and spooky. I'm going to notify Mulder and Scully.

I agree with Grant. The trees above the house have an aweful lot of flare for a shot taken after sundown. What you see is flare/ghosting from the sun. Or perhaps it is a wormhole forming! A spatial anomoly? That definitely explains a lot of things!

Like grant, I guessed flare at first.

 

But hearing the other evidence, here's my revised guess: A few miles from the Smokies, on a humid sultry southern evening - and the flash went off - and it's an ultra-short-focal-length-lens digicam.

 

This is something small floating in the air 1-2 feet in front of the camera, that reflected the flash light when nothing else did (too far away), sort of like OOF snowflakes in "Yankee" pictures and was ALMOST in focus due to the huge DOF. The dandelion folks were probably close - I'll bet it's a "fluff" from a seeding magnolia or some such.

 

Bet the cicadas were ZZZzz-ZZZzz-ZZZzzing in the dusk when you shot this.

I think Andy is about right. I've seen flash photos taken in a smoky atmosphere with a small sensor, large DOF digicam where individual smoke particles close to the lens seemed like christmas lights - getting a lot of illumination due to the inverse square law.

Apparently you guys havent seen dust in a microscope. You were walking around in your backyard and kicked up some dust\pollen with your feet, stuck to the lense and bam you have an "orb". This just happens to be a pretty wickedly huge one.

Look familliar?

 

http://wilfred.berkeley.edu/~webpage/backgrounds/Daisy-1024-768color.jpg

thats a kool dust orb....

I've got it... It's the ghost of Charlie Brown. After exhaustive, sophisticated "computer enhancement" of the image, I think we can finally put this mystery to rest.

 

But seriously folks, I really do appreciate all the comments. I could certainly be wrong because I don't know what in the hell it is, but I personally do not think it's dust, pollen, smoke, dandelions, or even a cicada breaking wind nearby. If I had to choose, I suppose I'd go with flare because the flash fired, but it's unlike any flare I've ever seen. The lens did seem rather prone to CA and purple fringing, and at 300 percent, you can see that. Unfortunately at ISO 400, the noise is pretty bad. Beats the heck out of me. I have the original file if anyone wants a look-see. Thanks again.<div></div>

<< but I personally do not think it's dust >>

 

You would be wrong. It is most certainly dust.

http://home.fujifilm.com/products/digital/tips/reflect/