How did my camera pick up this wierd reflection?

Photo taken in the year 2002 with my Fuji S1Pro - how did the camera capture the ghost flame?

I can still remember taking this image and wondering to myself, "What the heck is going on?"  It was a very long time ago, over 23 years now, and I took it with my first DSLR camera.  I used the lenses I owned at the time, Nikon lenses made for film cameras.  

It turns out that digital sensors are highly reflective, unlike the film that they have mostly replaced.  An image projected onto the camera's sensor will, to some extent, be reflected back towards the lens.  This wasn't a problem when using film with its lower reflectance, but issues started to develop where bright spots were present in a scene, especially if they were surrounded by darker areas.

The lenses made for film cameras had rear elements that did not take into account the reflective nature of digital sensors.  Newer lenses were made with this effect in mind; the solution was to place anti-reflective coatings on the rear lens element so that this wouldn't happen.  For example, Nikon uses an Arneo coating on lens elements to reduce internal reflections from occurring.  

The great thing about Nikon is that most DSLR cameras can use any Nikon lens made from 1977 on.  None of them had the anti-reflection coating that reduces the ghosting issues from digital sensor reflection, though.  If you are using an old lens and shooting scenes with bright spots in them, there is a chance you may experience this effect for yourself.

Thanks for reading.     

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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