California Sunsets and a Question

CoryUT

Went out shooting tonight and got some sunset pictures. I also ended up with an interesting artifact from the sun and would like to know why it happened, if anyone knows. C&C always welcome!

#1 - Mountain Silhouette


#2 - Behind The Trees


#3 - A Hazy Sky


#4 - Address on a Rock...my favorite except for the OOF bushes in front :cry



Here's the artifact:

thapamd

Very nice shots, Cory! I especially like the hazy sky image. Great job!

As far as the artifact, I don't have a clue!

Dogdots

Beautiful photos

As for the sun --- that is bright on the eyes but not a clue why its like that. Will be interesting to know. Hopefully someone will post the reason for that.

CoryUT

Thanks!

My best guess on the artifact is pixel corruption due to over-exposure. Still not sure why that would happen as opposed to just saturating pixels, but I suppose it could.

torags

It happens to me. Sometimes it's in the foreground, not always in line with the sun; it happens as the glare of the sun becomes too much for the lens to handle. That's my guess

Doesn't happen when I have my GND filter on.

When that happens I just fold up my tripod legs & leave; it's over for this sunrise, tomorrow is another day.

Here's one I turned positive...

MrBook2

That artifact is an effect known as "charge bleed" and without getting too technical, it is an artifact that comes about because of the way a CCD works. This happens because of overexposure. Feel free to stop reading now.

So, each pixel on the CCD accumulates charge proportional to the amount of light that hit it; to a point. Once you get too much charge, the CCD goes non-linear. In the end, it saturates (reaches the maximum value.) After that that point, you start to get weirdness. The best way to think about this (although not 100% technically correct) is to imagine that the charge then spills over into adjecent pixels. Because the values of pixels are read out in columns, you tend to get the charge bleed to follow columns. So, your Sun is saturated in this image, and you are seeing charge bleed along the columns where there is saturation.

Hope this helps.

CoryUT

MrBook2 wrote:

That artifact is an effect known as "charge bleed" and without getting too technical, it is an artifact that comes about because of the way a CCD works. This happens because of overexposure. Feel free to stop reading now.

So, each pixel on the CCD accumulates charge proportional to the amount of light that hit it; to a point. Once you get too much charge, the CCD goes non-linear. In the end, it saturates (reaches the maximum value.) After that that point, you start to get weirdness. The best way to think about this (although not 100% technically correct) is to imagine that the charge then spills over into adjecent pixels. Because the values of pixels are read out in columns, you tend to get the charge bleed to follow columns. So, your Sun is saturated in this image, and you are seeing charge bleed along the columns where there is saturation.

Hope this helps.

Perfect! Thanks for the explanation and I'm always interested in the details.

torags

Thanks from me too, MrBook2....

Dogdots

Very interesting how that happens. I would think this could be used to your benefit to if set up properly.