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Is this just lens flare?


petersant

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Hi,

I've recently got back into shooting on 16 and have a kind of flare that I see quite often on footage including a couple of shots from my last shoot. My question is is this just lens flare? is it simply a case of taking more care shading the lens or is it something more serious? I've noticed it happening mainly from practicals and blown out windows. I hope this pic illustrates the problem clearly.

Thanks 

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Is it only there on alternate frames? Sometimes you see that on old movies, almost as if it's a reflection of a light that's barely out of the top or bottom of the frame and it seems like half the shutter is reflecting something back into frame, as if someone fitted a spare part (mirror?) which wasn't properly black painted around the edge.

Speculating wildly there, but I have seen flares much like that before.

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Petersant. My sense is that it may be a reflection from a shiny area in the gate frame edge or maybe an internal reflection passing within the film itself from the previous frame into the next frame of the unexposed film before pulldown. Normally an uncovered or unshuttered viewfinder eyepiece might be expected to cause a veiling flare across the whole frame but there might be some weirdness happening with the chain of optics and prisms involved in optical viewfinders. Is this artifact you describe consistent across all shots with the only variations being intensity, or does it come and go. 

If your camera is an older Bolex I might suspect the shutter timing to be slightly off and a shiny spot on an edge of the shutter might be casting a flare. 

Phil Rhodes. An artifact occurring in alternating frames may be caused by a bowtie shutter being slightly out of timing and one blade's edges having been cut being very slightly off angle relative to its opposite blade. 

I wonder if a chip in the mirror shutter of a reflex camera could cast a pinpoint into some part of the camera throat or throw back into the image off the back of the lens. That is purely my imagination running wild. 

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Could be a normal lens flare from a light above the frame and no eyebrow on the mattebox, or no mattebox at all. Or it could be a gate flare though that would have to be from a bright light in the frame or maybe just below the frame in this case, which seems unlikely.

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