A total newbie needs help from experts

gorillajin · Mar 14, 2013

Hello,

I am very new to the photography world. I just joined a local photography club, and had the first meeting last night.
I do not know anything about photography, but I just love looking at the world through lens.

I have Nikon D90 with Nikon 24mm 1:2.8 lens. I took bunch of pictures of a bridge last night, and I got this weird lens flares?
Please see pictures below, and give me advice.

Thank you very much.

If you look at the sky, you can see weird effects.

Lights are showing lens flare....not crispy clear..

o hey tyler · Mar 14, 2013

Do you have a screw on filter over the front lens element?

KmH · Mar 14, 2013

Weird? No. Lens flare - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lens flare is caused by bright light sources that are near to, or in the image frame.

Screw on filters, particularly inexpensive, low quality filters added to the front of a lens add an air gap that promotes reflections (lens flare) in the added gap.
Air gaps internal to the lens can also promote lens flare. However, lens makers (and filter makers) can add coatings that help control lens flare.

gorillajin · Mar 14, 2013

Hello,

I had a low quality filter on, and it was worse than those pictures I posted. I removed it, and the results are the pictures I posted...

So there are nothing I can do about the lens flares? I couldn't really see all the flares through the camera lcd screen. I thought I took ok pictures, then I looked at them on my computer, I saw those flares.

One more question for you guys.
I am thinking to replace the low quality filter, but is a filter really necessary?

Thank you.

KmH · Mar 14, 2013

Not for 'protection'.

Image sensors have a UV filter in front of them, so one isn't needed on a lens, unless you are at or above 10,000 feet in altitude.

Joves · Mar 14, 2013

What you have here is ghosting not flaring. What lens are you using? You should try another one. Somewhere in the one you used it is reflecting the image on an element which is making a second image, only upside down. I used to have a few lenses back in my film days that would ghost like that on night shots, so I never used them. Now you can clone out the ghosts.