Backlighting and image artefacts

[Uhner]

This is a part of a 4x5 Efke PL100 negative (f16, ½ sec) taken with a 90mm f4.5 Grandagon on a Sinar Norma fitted with a bag bellows (my scanner can only handle a little less than half of a 4x5 negative). It is exposed in strong backlighting – the sun was just outside the top left of the whole scene. I used a lens shade but a large part, if not the whole of the front element of the lens was in direct sunlight during the exposure. Now to my question:

Over the water and down over the grass on the right side of the image there is some sort of artefact that I have not encountered before. Is this caused by internal reflections within the camera, or is this caused by something else?

Cheers

Claes

[Struan Gray]

It's internal reflections in the lens. Light bounces forwards off one surface, backwards again off another and onto the film. The heptagonal shape comes from the aperture.

This is so much a signature of what happens when the sun strikes the front element that Photoshop includes it as a filter effect so you can add it to photos that don't have it :-)

[Uhner]

Many thanks Struan.

Claes

[Struan Gray]

One tip: a 105 mm Lee adapter ring fits the old Norma filter holder perfectly. I find the Lee hood a good compromise between a fixed hood and the ideal but fiddly solution of an extra bellows and auxiliary standard.

[Falkenberg]

You could also use the standard lens shade (its called kompendium in danish) to keep the lens in the shade. there are also the special front with the barndoors.

I use the lens shade and I find it to be the easiest way to get rid of unwanted light.

[Uhner]

Thanks for the advice. I have been contemplating the purchase of a Lee filter system for some time.

However, I doubt that any type of lens shade would have helped me when taking this image -given the short focal length of the lens and the angle of sun. To make things worse I could not wait for better light. Nor could I back up and use a longer lens.