weird phenomena occurring in this shot? any ideas?

<p>Can anyone explain why there is a upside down reflection of my subjects in this shot. It occurred in pretty much the whole series of shots I photographed from this angle. I've been shooting for 10+ years and have never seen or perhaps noticed this issue in my photos. In this picture I was shooting with a 5D mark II, with a Canon 70-200mm 2.8, shot at 70mm, ISO 320 F2.8 1/125 of a second. <br>

My only guess is it has something to do with shooting into the sun, and maybe there was a reflection within the UV filter on my lens, but I'm not sure. Does anyone have any other explanations. Thank you for your time.<img src="../photo/14639133" alt="" /><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/14639133-lg.jpg" alt="" width="467" height="700" /></p>

<p>Hi Teran. It is quite odd indeed, I have less experience than you but have been shooting since early teens and never seen anything quite like that before. I like shooting into the sun as well, so I would have spotted something as obvious as this. The shot could probably be rescued, but that's beyond the point here.</p>

<p>My only tip would be to remove your UV filter (or anything similar). It might not solve the problem, but I find filters often cause all sorts of extra problems when shooting into the light. I always get much cleaner shots without. A filter reflection, perhaps... hopefully someone else can help.</p>

<p>Yes, shooting into the sun with a UV filter caused this. </p>

<p>It's definitely a reflection. Almost certainly between the parallel planar surfaces of the sensor and the UV filter. To show this, I took your image, flipped it horizontally and vertically (...same as rotating 180 deg...), dropped its opacity to 50%, added some contrast, and marked it up as follows:</p>

<p>red lines => center of image</p>

<p>green arrows => tips placed on a couple of corresponding points of the primary and flipped image</p>

<p>blue arrows => tips placed on a couple of corresponding points of the weak reflections in both the primary and flipped images.</p>

<p>As you can see there is perfect symmetry through the center of the image, essentially ruling out anything but reflections between parallel surfaces with a lens between them.</p>

<p>HTH,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>PS - We haven't had a thread on the use of UV filters in a couple of months. Gee, this would seem like the perfect opportunity to start yet another one. I'm sure we could round up proponents in the "always", "never" and "sometimes" camps. (not!)</p><div></div>

<p>TOM, thank you for the detailed response, work to exhibit the issue and sarcasm. Sorry to be an inconvenience to the threads. Hopefully, it wont be that much on annoyance when it comes up again.</p>

<p>Teran, your question was about a phenomenon which you could not explain. Unexceptionable. I've been around here for a while but cannot recall a single identical thread. I've also seen, over decades, many of the awful things that filters can do: but it would be unwise to speak of that here.</p>

<p>[[i've been around here for a while but cannot recall a single identical thread]]</p>

<p>I'd be hard-pressed to find a thread that was indeed <strong>identical</strong>. However there are quite a number of threads in the archives that show the same phenomenon, but most are related to strong, smaller, light sources (neon signs, street lights, etc).</p>

<p>[[sorry to be an inconvenience to the threads. Hopefully, it wont be that much on annoyance when it comes up again.]]</p>

<p>I don't believe Tom was not talking about this thread. He was talking about threads where posters debate,<em> ad nauseam</em>, the usefulness of UV filters: whether you should/should not leave them on all the time, potential loss of image quality, etc. etc. Those threads are frequent and tiresome.</p>

<p>You should not apologize for posting your question.</p>

<p>Teran, what make of UV filter are you using? Is this issue visible through the viewfinder? (This would be useful info for a lot of people.)</p>

<p>Tom, I agree with you that it's definitely a filter-related reflection issue ("ghosting"), but I'm stumped as to how this can occur between the filter and the sensor. I always considered ghosting to be related to reflections between lens elements. The perfect symmetry is usual and interesting. I'm very curious as to whether the issue is visible through the viewfinder, as I think the ground surface of the focusing screen faces the mirror chamber and wouldn't reflect back towards the lens.</p>

<blockquote>

<p> Sorry to be an inconvenience to the threads. Hopefully, it wont be that much on annoyance when it comes up again.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>What annoyance? I had never seen this before and it was quite interesting. My first thought was some kind of reflection from a mirror or other thing, not knowing the gear used (unless you listed it and I missed it). Finding out it is as simple as a UV filter was quite interesting.</p>

<p>Teran, no apology required, and that is an excellent photo you supplied to demonstrate the effect and thanks to Tom for doing the work to detail the explanation.</p>

<p>I sure hope lots of others see this one in the future.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Tom, man, i must say that your explanation and visual aid is ... perfect : )</p>

<p>dont know how you think about that, but nobody can fight over the explanation!...</p>

<p>As for the filter, the first thing i do when i use / rent / borrow a lens is; remove the #$%?& filter in front of it, never have this problem before.. but now i have another good reason to remove them.</p>

<p><em>>> PS - We haven't had a thread on the use of UV filters in a couple of months. Gee, this would seem like the perfect opportunity to start yet another one. I'm sure we could round up proponents in the "always", "never" and "sometimes" camps. (not!)</em></p>

<p>I vote NEVER (unless you are in a sea spray/toddler-snot-flying situation, otherwise useless).<br /> Expensive/pro lenses and UV filters on them? Biggest joke I can only imagine (but it happens, even to the best of you, some of you, out there). ;-)</p>

<p>(and this image example posted above is pretty cool, thanks for that!)</p>

<p>Tom Mann is obviously an <a href="

And a good thing it is too. :)</p>

<p> </p>

<p>There is a formal ghost tour on River Street in Savannah. :-) Ya, never know. </p>

<p>I am one of those who does put a UV filter on all of my lenses. I do it to protect the lens from all the little dings, etc. and I can still compose through the lens. But, I remove it for the shot. It is basically a transparent lens cap for my purpose. I have dinged enough of those cheap filters over the years to realize that I have saved the front element of quite a few lenses in that time.</p>

<p>Thanks for all the responses, I guess I'll be taking off the UV filters more often now.<br>

Sarah, the UV filter was Hoya. I didn't notice it in the viewfinder when I was shooting, of course I wasn't really looking for it either. <br>

Tom, sorry if I misread your comment as sarcasm, regardless your diagram and explanation is amazing, thank you!</p>

 

"According to the information available the digital cameras have (amongst others) one major difference to their film based cousins. They have a much greater sensitivity to Ultra Violet light. This effects the image by causing greater image blur and colour bleed. The extra coatings on the Pro UV filters significantly reduce the blur of the UV light and increase the colour accuracy in the captured image. Where you are looking for really sharp images such as fingerprints or other areas of fine detail these filters really do make the difference."

 

http://www.neateimaging.com/page39.html

<p>For what it is worth, it may not be the filter. I have seen this exact phenomenon occur on lenses without any filter. I was messing around with a friend's Nikon 35mm f/1.8G one day, making photos of a Christmas tree, and with no filter at all, ever single Christmas light appeared in the image as an inverted and flipped ghost in perfect symmetry to its real position in the image. Some situations just create odd reflection internally. </p>

I hate to interrupt this discussion but isn't that a stretcar approaching in the background?

<p>"Tom, man, i must say that your explanation and visual aid is ... perfect : )<br>

dont know how you think about that, but nobody can fight over the explanation!..."<br>

+1</p>

<p>So, just to get the details correct, precisely which Hoya UV filter, what model was affixed to the lens?</p>

<p>Some UV filters are multi-coated, some single coated, and some are bare glass. The multicoated filters should result in less of a problem.</p>

<p>Reflections between the filter and the lens can occur with many kinds of filters, especially shooting into bright lights. This can occur in night scenes as well as shooting a sunrise, e.g.. I learned this lesson with cheap, uncoated UVs many years ago.</p>

<p>You can get a similar reflection if the surface on any inner lens element is close to being flat. The reflections are just much more apparent nowdays as sensors are more reflective that film.</p>

 

<p>What Jeremy said. It's not the filter but internal reflections. I've seen this sort of thing while shooting and it was still there when the filter was removed.</p>

<p>The reflection has a green cast. I don't know whether this is because the image is reflecting off a shiny greenish sensor or off of internal anti-reflective coatings, but when I do see this kind of thing, that green cast is present.</p>

<p>For what it's worth, you aren't seeing a reflection of the couple. You are seeing a reflection of the bright background. The silhouette of the couple is caused by the real couple masking the background.</p>

<p>Finally, one image flaw probably caused by the filter is the overall softness and lack of contrast in the image. The filter can work like a diffuser if any dirt, grease, scratches or other defects are on it.</p>