Green orb in iPhone camera

I’ve been a photographer for over 50 years and all I see are internal reflections of bright points of light bouncing off various lens elements within the lens assembly. They can appear to move because as a lens focuses or zooms some lens elements shift back and forth. The “blobs” can be different colours depending on what anti-reflective coating was used on each element. End of story. Take it or leave it.

You have a guardian angel always by your side. I’ve been seeing these for the last year and a half, my sons father passed away two years ago in sept of 2019. The green orbs can manipulate flame from a candle and will actually make the flame jump from side to side depending on where you have it centered, they are confirmed spirits, guardians, angelic beings, elementals, nature spirits and different energies. When especially high vibrational energies they glow pink and at times resemble the shape of a heart if ur lucky. Consider yourself protected, for there is always an angel on your side watching over you.

In every one of those images you are shooting into the sun or a bright source of light. Any photographer, professional or amateur, will tell you that is a huge no-no. What is happening is the image of the sun is reflecting back and forth between the lens elements in the camera. This will happen with any camera, from an iPhone to a $10,000 professional DSLR.

The only way to avoid it, with any camera, is to keep a light source out of the image, either off to the side or behind the photographer.

starstuff1313 wrote:

I don’t think you understand. In the three second live shot the blue dot is in focus, out of focus, in focus again moves in four directions and in and out of the frame. In three seconds. While nothing else in the photo moved. There is NO WAY that was the phone moving. Software updated, phone checked at Apple, no smears, smuges or case covering the lens.

No, it is you who don’t understand. The phone is moving very slightly. It is not physically possible to hold a camera perfectly steady in your hand for 3 seconds. The flare (the spot) movement is an artifact of the fact that there is a multiplier of thousands of times in the movement of reflections of the bright light source in the lens (because of the distance from the light source to the lens vs the distance from the lens to the CCD sensor) , so the very slightest movement of the phone will move the spot. The spot is not dust or an insect, it is an internal reflection of the light source between elements of the lens. It is called “lens flare” and it will happen with any camera when there is a light source that can be “seen” by the camera’s lens. That’s why real cameras have “sunshades” around the lens for outdoor photography (or indoor with bright lights). You can get a sunshade for the iPhone’s camera if you want to better control lens flare.

There is no such multiplier in the physical objects in the image, so they don’t appear to move. Did you read my post that you responded to, and the link in it? Here it is again: https://photographylife.com/what-is-ghosting-and-flare/amp

I went back through the thread, and am not sure what specific video you're referring to but I can tell you that just about everything I see you've shown is under very challenging conditions for any camera system, let alone a cell phone camera system. You could have used a $45,000 camera for the scenes you've posted as proof of fault in your iPhone and the results would have not likely been much better.

I can see you're interested in photography. A photography class, either online or perhaps through your local community college would help you immensely with photographic knowledge and would greatly improve the results you get regardless of the equipment you use.

Real photographers don't blame the equipment for less than great results. Artists don't blame the paintbrush for paintings which didn't turn out as they hoped either.

Dark has never been completely dark. So your starting point has no place in the discussion. Also, how can lens flares explain that it seemingly randomly started happening. Why not before? Why is it happening all of a sudden now? New dust flakes, maybe. But then why does it only happen sometimes and not every video/picture? And even in ones that have the sun in it. Wouldn’t the phenomenon happen regularly? As opposed to randomly? Since photographers can control the phenomenon, how come this is out of control and difficult to reproduce (in my experience)? Repeating your main argument over and again is not helpful. So if that’s all you have to say, thank you in advance for your contribution. Feel free to move on, since you’ve already debunked it in your mind. Let the rest of us who aren’t so convinced keep on our path.

Hello Standclearofclosingdoorsplease ,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. It looks like you have a green orb when taking videos with your iPhone 7 camera. We want to make sure we provide you with the help and support you need. To help, we’d like the following details: 

- Do you notice these camera quality issues within the built-in Camera app, another app, or all apps that use the camera? If a specific app/apps, which app(s)?

- Is this happening with both the rear and front cameras?

- Do you have anything covering the camera such as an attachment or screen protector? If so, let’s remove it, please.

Please check out this helpful link:

If you see a flare, haze, or spot near the edge of your photo or video

Let us know those extra details, and we’ll continue moving forward from there.

We hope this information is useful. Kind regards.

I too have had some pictures with the green orbs. I’ve been so confused because it’s so random. I’ve tried to cancel things out by snapping a few in a row holding the phone still, I’ve tried night and day pictures, behind glass and without obstructions and it seems to move on it’s own.

I was just filming my daughter playing soccer for her travel team. When I got home I saw in my videos that there was a green dot bouncing around following my daughter for almost an hour. At One point it literally moves up close with my phone lens to the point that it has to refocus as it made the whole picture blurry. I looked it up and it says green orbs are associated with the heart, nature, and is a presence of a human spirit. The crazy part is I lost my mother 1 week exactly from the video. Then my sister is on a walk with her son and had the same experience. In the video you can literally see it zig zagging around but it follows my daughter all over the field for 1 hour. Was really crazy experience. In the pics below is from my video when it flys close to the camera and gets blurry from lens trying to adjust and then flies back out and focuses again It's def not the phone. It is definitely something and I will show a pic of what they say the different colors mean for Orbs

When you purchase the forum, you can tell me what I can or can't say or when I can move on. Until then, as long as I'm not breaking any forum rules, I'm entitled to post as are you.

You ask why this all of the sudden started to happen? It didn't all of the sudden happen. The flares which are now much more visible in iPhone 11 and 12 with the introduction of dark mode are getting more notice. Before these phones, it was almost impossible to take pictures in such low light situations. So, there are much fewer photos with flares in them because the digital noise in low light photos made the photos hardly worth taking and poor at best.

As to why it happens sometimes, not always is because you're using a hand held device and the angle of cameras relative to the subjects and light vary with every slight movement of your hand. You can easily see the flares before you take a photo and easily move the angle of the camera to eliminate the flare. This takes more effort and time of course, but I have shown how to do this in other threads by posting photos of a scene with flares and without flares with me doing nothing more than angling the camera differently. Taking videos in low light however and hoping to eliminate all flares with direct lights facing the camera is much more difficult. The best advice is to try to avoid videos in low light facing lights directly. But that may not always be possible, so living with some flares in videos in low light is inevitable.

You can keep your path here and continue to deny the physics of photographic optics all you want. I won't ever attempt to stop you. I will however, point out where I am convinced you don't understand the physics of photographic optics. If you don't understand or accept my points, that's OK too.

Here is an example of two photos, where I never moved, but did change the angle of the camera to eliminate flares:

Well 2 years ago, a man was recording a river of orbs flying out of the roundhouse here in New Mexico , I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The round house is the state capital here in New Mexico. The orbs name the crop circles, a Buddhist who looks over N. Americas oldest Stupa told me, “ the orbs are the next wave of healing. We can control them they can heal” I hope this doesn’t sound weird

Thank you for the technical explanation. Can you please explain how a spot of blue or green light moves into an image, is clear then fuzzy then clear again, then moves up and down and then moves out of the image -all in a 3 second live iPhone photo when the phone is being held still? Too cold to be a bug. I want to believe it’s something that can be explained - I can’t understand how flare explains the odd and erratic movement. Thank you.

The dark isn't really dark, now is it? There are light sources unless you are shooting in a totally dark room with no light sources at all. And that's highly unlikely. With Night Mode, you can take a photo in a dark room without a light source, but you have to hold the camera absolutely still for multiple seconds. As long as there are light sources, your sensor picks them up. And the flare moves as Lawrence so well explained above because you are NOT holding the camera absolutely still as it's not possible to do so handheld.