Can someone tell me what happened here?

[hteasley]

I took pictures of my daughter's music concert, M8 and 35mm Summicron IV, and I got this ghosting of the window behind them in most of the photos. What caused this? What would have been the best way to avoid it? Could I have avoided it without moving my seat?

It was pretty dim in they gym, there, so I was shooting at f2.

 

[Leigh Youdale]

Odd. It looks like an internal reflection you've picked up somehow - maybe off a filter surface or something that lies between you and the people sitting in front of you. Maybe even a flare from a lens element given the strong window light. I've never seen this before but others may have.

 

[hteasley]

Odd. It looks like an internal reflection you've picked up somehow - maybe off a filter surface or something that lies between you and the people sitting in front of you. Maybe even a flare from a lens element given the strong window light. I've never seen this before but others may have.

Hmmmm... I do have a UV/IR cut filter on, of course... Maybe a reflection caused by that?

It is odd, as I haven't seen anything like that in any other photos with that lens.

 

[popeye]

Until someone with direct experience chimes in, I do believe that is the case. I recall reading somewhere in that being the big issue in using one to control IR.

 

[dyao]

http://photo.net/mjohnston/column66/index.html

scroll down towards the end...

 

[hteasley]

http://photo.net/mjohnston/column66/index.html

scroll down towards the end...

Thanks for finding that... That certainly looks like the issue. Now I know.

That does make the need for IR filters for the M8 more problematic than I had supposed it would be.

 

[willie_901]

I think the window artifacts you see here are caused by serious over exposure. Digital cameras do not tolerate over exposure well.

The artifacts described here:

http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Glossary/Optical/chromatic_aberration_01.htm

are intensified by over exposure. Be sure to read all the whole article.

Filters can cause reflections and artifacts as well, as other point out.

So two different things may be going on.

Was there anything you could do without moving? No, unless you weren't shooting RAW. RAW always helps in this type of situation. To balance outdoor light from a large window you need to use fairly high levels of strobe light. The idea would be to expose for the window (using the highest shutter speed compatible with strobe syncing) and light the room with the strobe. The strobe intensity is adjusted such that the indoor light and window light fall within the dynamic range of your camera. In this case that would be a rather high amount of strobe light.

The purple tint could just be a color balance issue. Or, it could be an artifact from the over exposure, or from filter reflections. The tint looks uniform so you should be able to compensate using any number of image editing software packages.

The lighting conditions from your seat were very difficult. I doubt any camera/lens/filter combination could cope with the dynamic range inside the gym.