“Bullseye” artifacts while doing long exposure on auroras with iPhone 15

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“Bullseye” artifacts while doing long exposure on auroras with iPhone 15

Hi folks

Big aurora tonight, so I took my iPhone 15 out to see what it could do.

Every single one of my

pictures has a very noticeable bullseye artifact. I tried shooting different perspectives, lenses, tried shooting slightly darker, and different exposure times with no improvement. I also switched between tripod and hand shooting. The lenses are clean with no covers or cases.

I’ve found one other post about this with no solution. Is this a known issue? Pretty unhappy honestly, the camera was a major selling point for me.

Any solutions or discussion is appreciated.

iPhone 15, iOS 17

Posted on May 11, 2024 12:24 AM

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Answer 1

May 11, 2024 11:19 AM in response to crumsie

Those are the result of lens flare, and are caused by having light sources in your image or falling directly on the lens from outside of the image. They are an effect of optical physics, basically reflections between the elements in the lens. Here’s a general discussion of lens flare→What is Lens Flare and How to Deal with it in Photography.

Here is a user tip on lens flare specifically for smartphones→iPhone Camera Lens Flare and Reflections - Apple Community. You will note that it happens with all cameras from a smartphone to $50,000 professional cameras.

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Answer 2

May 11, 2024 12:43 PM in response to crumsie

Those center-of-frame bullseyes look like diffraction artifact from the lensing, and not lens flare.

Other than maybe increasing the aperture size or more light or post-processing (obviously), I don’t know of a way to eliminate those rings.

Related: Artifact in long exposure images - Apple Community

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disk

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