Glare in night photos. Dirty sensor? Dirty/damaged lens(es)?

A

Alllfff

Messages
10
Edit My Images
Yes
Hello everyone,
Yesterday night I went to take some photographs of night Edinburgh with all the Christmas market and attractions. I have very quickly discovered a problem I was having. I had lots of glares and ghost spots on all my photos, wether I took my Sigma 10-20 or my Sigma 18-50. So I thought it was the sensor. Then I look at the photos from my Nikon 50mm prime and i dont see any of these.

In those images with the artefacts I can also see quite strong red green and blue strips around bright lights, this was not my first night shooting but Ive never seen those kind of "halos" before. I read around the internet that these problems can be exaggerated by high apertures.

So I want to ask what people think before I put my camera for a sensor clean, which is due anyway.

I am adding the worst images from the night, these images are overexposed in lightroom just to see the artefacts properly. I also circled and arrowed most of them.

Thank you so much for your help!
Have a great Christmas holidays
Regards Ondrej
nightshotsforfixing.jpg
 
No, I had a filter on the 50mm and it was doing it as well so i took it off and it stopped but not with the 10-20 or 18-50, there wasnt a filter on either of them.
 
This is NOT sensor dirt. It's lens flare. Simple as that. The Nikkor 50mm wasn't doing it because A) it's a very simple optical design with fewer air to glass surfaces inside it, and B) It's a brilliant lens. The Sigma's are doing it because they are far more complex in design, with far more air to glass surfaces for light to reflect and bounce around, and because... well, you get what you pay for.
 
Last edited:
Yup, just lens flare, short of not pointing at direct light sources, not a lot you can do about it.

Try widening the aperture a bit, as the higher it is, the more "spikes" you get on the street light flare. I think the streetlight flare makes the shots though TBH, just a shame about the erronous light cuasing the other flaring.
 
As above, some lenses show flare more than others but shooting at or above F20 is going to make matters worse due to diffraction. Widen the aperture to F13-16 and see if it helps.

Cheers
Steve
 
Firstly I wanted to thank everyone for their input, secondly I have gone to the images from the night and looked into photos with opened up lens and found this one :(
f8 at 1/4s with the 18-50 sigma @ 34mm
dsc0462l.jpg
 
Any direct light source will flare on cheaper lenses, and most expensive lenses too.
Nothing you can do about it, just bear it mind when composing.
Either do it on purpose


My Disco by TCR4x4, on Flickr


Daniel and Rachelle Pre wedding scout by TCR4x4, on Flickr


Or compose your shot to compensate. Some smaller flares can be editied out, but a lot of the time its too much work.
 
Thanks for the advice, the thing with these night photos I couldnt see any of these flares in the viewfinder when composing.
 
If you are lucky you can just clone them out. Blocking stray light with your hand or cloth may help. Otherwise this pretty much depends on the lens and some are much better than the others. Zeiss are usually the very best, but more practically nikon range maybe more suited.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top