Argh! Strange circle things in my pictures...

Well, I have a Casio EX-S100 in addition to my 300D for easy, family

shots. Recently it's been showing funny circle things--and they don't

just look like dead pixels or whatever, it almost looks like flare,

but it isn't... here are two pictures with the thing. They actually

show up to a certain extent in all my pictures, and you can even see

them in the preview screen. What is it? Can someone help?<br /><br />

 

Examples:<br />

<a href="http://www.aerofive.com/examples/1.jpg">Example 1</a><br />

<a href="http://www.aerofive.com/examples/2.jpg">Example 2</a><br /><br />

 

Those are images straight from the camera, so it may take a bit to

load.<br /><br />

 

Thanks,<br /><br />

 

Adam

I think that you're seeing small specs of dust floating in the air near your camera, which are illuminated by the flash.

Maybe dust IN the camera?

They're too exactly similar in shape to be dust, I believe. This looks a LOT (almost exactly) like a problem that an old point-and-shoot of mine has - every once in a while, it would deliver anywhere from a few of those to a TON of them. Attached is one of the most extreme examples.

 

Looking at both of your photos, I can see areas where reflections of the flash are very strong, so it's very likely the same thing happening in your camera.

 

The shapes that appear are actually the shape of the aperture as light bounces around inside of the lens, as it shouldn't. It always happened when a very bright light entered the lens at just the wrong angle, often caused by the flash reflecting off of something - in the attached example, the flash was reflecting off of raindrops in the air. Because there were a good number of raindrops, there were a lot of the reflections, and hence there are many of these little UFOs. If you look, you'll see that the shape of them distorts as you get to the corners of the image. There's a term for that sort of distortion, I saw it mentioned and pointed out in the leica forum a little while ago.

 

Overall, while I don't know the technical name or terminology, this is the result of a poor lens. :-(

 

steve<div></div>

hi Adam,

I'm guessing there may be dust somewhere in the camera - on the lens, inside the lens, or on the sensor. Can you do a thorough cleaning and see if the spots go away?

 

BTW, your dorm room looks EXACTLY like my freshman dorm (Carman Hall) when I went to Columbia U in NYC. Oh, the fond memories...

 

Jennifer

Thanks all for your help. My pictures at home don't usually show it as much for some reason, just maybe a couple small circles off to the side. Interestingly, though I couldn't see it earlier, I just now notice it in my first photos too w/ the camera. I've only had the camera since late this summer. I mostly use the flash, so it is hard to tell whether it only occurs with the flash, but I may have found a photo w/ no flash and the circles. <br /><br />

 

A couple more shots if you realllly wanted them. These two are interesting since the circles are clumped together:<br />

<a href="http://www.aerofive.com/examples/3.jpg">Example 3</a><br />

<a href="http://www.aerofive.com/examples/4.jpg">Example 4</a><br /><br />

 

But more importantly, the shot that doesn't look like I used a flash (circles on the edge of the left drawer under the bottom bed).<br />

<a href="http://www.aerofive.com/examples/5.jpg">Example 5 w/o flash</a><br /><br />

 

And yes this is my dorm, I'm a freshman at Grove City College...

Maybe I should send the camera in? I don't know how to tell if it is dust, but the front element doesn't look dirty.

Adam, given that the spots move from one picture to the other (please double check that this is the case), I would guess it isn't dust in the camera or on the lens. It looks like you used flash. As Steve showed, small points (such as raindrops or snow flakes) can reflect flash, and the more out of focus they are, the larger the circle they make. It is Not a function of a poor lens -- it's simple optics and would happen with any lens. However, bigger lenses, such as those used on DSLRs, have much less depth of field than point-and-shoot digitals, so little specks like dust near the camera get completely blurred out. My guess is that you're using a point-and-shoot camera with flash and b/c of the extremely large depth of field, they show up in the shot. There's not much solution for this, unfortunately -- vacuum more, don't use flash, or shoot your 300D, which has much less depth of field.

GO here:

 

http://www.vanwalree.com/optics/dof.html

 

Find the word "ghosts" on the page (it's a long way down), and read what follows.

Thanks, that makes me a little more relieved that I don't have to send my camera in, however annoying it is. I can deal with it. I'm still a bit puzzled as to how example #5 shows up with ghosts...

 

I'll try to use my 300D as much as possible. It's weird, I never realized how many little (and sometimes big) differences there are between digicams (at least mine) and dslrs aside from image quality. I appreciate my 300D more than I ever realized (my 300D was my first digital camera and I was surprised at first to find it wasn't tack-sharp).

 

I really appreciate all of your help!

Stephen H, Steven Wolfe and Jennifer Valencia are incorrect, but that's been established by Brian, David S, and Mark U. For more info see a couple hundred other photo.net threads on "orbs" or "spots" and "digital" in a photo.net search.

 

As for your image #5, your camera did fire the flash. The first obvious clue is in the EXIF data of the image file where is says: Flash: Fired(Auto)

 

The other clues are:

The shadow line below the dark pillow, the shadow from the jacket hanging on the bed, the bright reflections from the lamp, the bright reflection from book bag on top of the bed, the small reflection from the poster, and lastly, the shadow of the door/closet frame on the right-side of the image.

The Exif information embedded in Example 5 indicates that the flash did indeed fire when you took that picture last November.

I know people often get frustrated when members don't search, but I assure I did as many places as best as I knew how (I didn't come up with the word "orb", but searching for variations of "spots" or "discs" or "circles" didn't come up with anything for me).

 

I guess having a flash fired answers my last question then. I didn't know it was fired because I don't know how to view exif info. I'll have to look that one up.

<< but searching for variations of "spots" or "discs" or "circles" didn't come up with anything for me). >>

 

In many ways, learning how to search is more important than the search itself.

 

In this case, "spots" is such a big category (that could cover both film and digital in dozens of different areas) that limiting your search to "spots digital" (without the quotes) returns good info in link #2 and which could give you a basis for deeper searching. You knew to post the question in the digital camera forum, so you were on the right track. If you had applied that idea to your search, you would have had better luck in finding those old threads.

Adam,

Thanks for the post and the many answers it generated. I'd just bought my wife a new P&S camera for Xmas and she took the grandkids to a dark climbing gym for a climbing photo shoot. Maybe now she'll understand that it isn't a lousy camera and it wasn't her fault either for all the UFOs. Horrors, guess I'll have to loan her the 20D next time!<div></div>

Man, those are orbs. I hate to say this, but your dorm room is haunted. You should get out now.

Under the right set of circumstances this would be a hell of an effect.

those are dust particals in front of the camera flashing back from the flash. try to take two picts of the same scene, one with flash and one with a pice of paper over the flash...you will see a differance. if your camera has a manule adjustment for your camera...try to adjust your flash with a slow flash or rear flash to rid the problem of "orbs"

Some people claim these are orbs (ghost things) but they can just be dust. I saw a thing on tv where sceptics proved that the "orbs" could very well be dust particals in the air.

Adam,

I honestly do not think that they are dust circles because I have been taking pictures quite a bit and I didn't experiance those type of circles until my grandmother had past away on March 28th 2008 since then I have had those circles in my house. I would take a picture of the same thing 3 times and they would move. Some of them were darker then others. I am one to believe in ghosts and phinominon. I don't get them outside they are constintly inside my house. I would go to someone elses house to take a picture and they would not appear. Then I would bring their camera's over to my house and they would appear on their camera's.I guess it all depends on what you believe.

 

Jaime

[[i guess it all depends on what you believe.]]

 

No, it doesn't. It all depends on understanding optics and physics.

Hello. Can anyone help me with my pics? Several have a purple light (alomost looks like a flashlifht shape?) with 2 purple orbs underneath it. This is not in every picture I took, but it doesnt look anything like these dust spec orbs Ive seen in other pics? any ideas? I was using a Kodak digital camera.<div></div>

Here is another example

Julie,

 

That is called lens flare. You can search here for other threads. It's caused by aiming the lens into the sun. One solution, depending on the angle of the sun to your lens, is to use a lens hood. Otherwise, change your composition or shade your lens with a hat or hand.