Reflection on photos

To add a little more explanation, it’s called lens flare; it will appear any time there is a light source in the image, or outside the image but still hitting the lens. And it happens with all cameras, and, paradoxically, the better the quality of the camera the more likely you are to encounter it. Here is a technical description→What is Lens Flare and How to Deal with it in Photography

This is an internal refection in the lenses; you see it all the time in movies and TV shows that are filmed at night with headlights or spotlights. It's pretty much unavoidable when there is an extremely bright light with a much darker background. Movie directors think it adds realism, somehow. If you don't, then in Mac Photos there is a retouch tool that would fix it.

In iOS Photos there doesn't seem to be a retouch tool, but there are 3rd party apps that provide that function.

Actually, the term "Lens Flare" isn't usually used much to describe the reflected image that Oasis55x sees in his picture. Rather, like in your interesting article, I've always seen Lens Flare to refer to "streaks" of light caused by internal reflections from bright light sources well off axis. This is an example from that article:

It has the same sort of cause, and likewise the second image is severely reduced by lens coatings. But the usual suggestion of using a lens hood would not help in the case of this second image. Interestingly, your article talked about this sort of second image "...unlike lens flare..." coming from a reflection from the sensor, but I certainly saw this second on-axis reflection with film and an SLR, as well as in laser light table applications.

But what you call it isn't very important-- it happens with all lens systems, and the only way to avoid it is to stay away from bright lights! Or to artificially remove it with computer software...

oops--weird double post

Richard.Taylor wrote:

oops--weird double post

Posting has been a bit...problematic... lately.

You can report your own post as a duplicate post. Or, just do what you did.

Great answer!

IdrisSeabright wrote: Posting has been a bit...problematic... lately.

Yeah-- how about that!