Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Last Friday at the beach, Icy and I were wondering why our digital cameras sometimes took pictures that had some white spots all over them. They seemingly appeared at random times and at random locations on the photograph.
Here's one of them from the beach. Notice the spots in the air. There's one on the head of the old man behind Joe.
Some of my pictures from the Philippines had these, too. Here's one with a big spot on Jed's head as he was dancing:
And this picture has one right above my ear:
I've been wondering about these for a while. After a little internet research, it looks like it's a pretty common occurence when you use a flash in pretty dusty environments. Those spots are airborne dust particles that are floating pretty close to the camera. They end up reflecting the flash back to the lens. It happens pretty often on cameras with a flash bulb design that is located really close to the lens. Come to think of it, a lot of those pictures were taken outdoors during nighttime. Anyone else experience this problem?
Another interesting thing is that over the course of finding out about the spots, I saw quite a few websites that identify them as orb-shaped spirits. Sort of like ghosts but not in human form. They're invisible to the naked eye but are easily photographed. Umm... sure, ok.
Here's one of them from the beach. Notice the spots in the air. There's one on the head of the old man behind Joe.
Some of my pictures from the Philippines had these, too. Here's one with a big spot on Jed's head as he was dancing:
And this picture has one right above my ear:
I've been wondering about these for a while. After a little internet research, it looks like it's a pretty common occurence when you use a flash in pretty dusty environments. Those spots are airborne dust particles that are floating pretty close to the camera. They end up reflecting the flash back to the lens. It happens pretty often on cameras with a flash bulb design that is located really close to the lens. Come to think of it, a lot of those pictures were taken outdoors during nighttime. Anyone else experience this problem?
Another interesting thing is that over the course of finding out about the spots, I saw quite a few websites that identify them as orb-shaped spirits. Sort of like ghosts but not in human form. They're invisible to the naked eye but are easily photographed. Umm... sure, ok.
