Insect flying past my camera?

session savage

Hi all,
Could anyone offer an explaination for these weird distortions on the top part of this picture.
I'm guessing they are insect wings flying past but I really havent a clue.


Village by night 2 by John Keane, on Flickr

DaireQuinlan

It's flare, or internal reflection in your lens. If you rotate the image 180 you'll see that the cluster of shapes correspond exactly with the brighter lights in the village. Have you a filter on the lens?

session savage

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

It's flare, or internal reflection in your lens. If you rotate the image 180 you'll see that the cluster of shapes correspond exactly with the brighter lights in the village. Have you a filter on the lens?

No I don't have any filters yet. What kind of filter would I use?

DaireQuinlan

None. Sometimes this kind of flare happens if there's an uncoated filter on the lens. Sans filter, it's probably just the lens itself is prone to this sort of flare. Some long zoom I assume?

session savage

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

None. Sometimes this kind of flare happens if there's an uncoated filter on the lens. Sans filter, it's probably just the lens itself is prone to this sort of flare. Some long zoom I assume?

Yeah it was full zoom with my 75-300.
No way to avoid the flare so?

Thanks for the replies.

flyingsnail

Lens hoods can help reduce lens flare by locking unwanted / stray light coming in from the sides but when shooting directly into the light source like this it is very hard to avoid. If you look at your other picture, “Village by night 1” you can see it around the street lights on the bottom of the picture. A dirty lens can also make flares worse.