Sun Artifact

[Phil Bates]

I noticed this problem on a recent shoot. A magenta dot where the sun appears in the frame (Build 15, Nikon 17mm to 35mm lens). Any idea what causes this? Does it happen all the time? What are experienced shooters doing to compensate or correct for this?

Thanks,
Phil

http://www.artbeats.com

 

[Justin Kirchhoff]

Phil....this has been talked about and talked about. It's something they will be working on soon. It's what RED does.

 

[A New Low]

This came up in the skydiving w/ RED thread as well. Here's the q & a from there:

I know this has been discussed before, but what is the technical cause of the dark dot in the center of the sun? Is it an issue of the sensor to enormous overexposure?

Apparently it is (has been referred to as a "sensor protect" feature). It was much more prevalent on the earlier builds. Apparently it has been reduced, but is not yet gone.

 

[Phil Bates]

Phil....this has been talked about and talked about. It's something they will be working on soon. It's what RED does.

Thanks Justin. I've missed those threads. So meanwhile, is everyone trying to avoid letting the sun appear in the frame? Is that the short answer?

Thanks for your patience,
Phil

http://www.artbeats.com

 

[Brook Willard]

It's a quick fix in post. It's a crappy workaround, but it's the nature of the beast. They're 16 builds deep and it's still there... I'm guessing it's here to stay.

 

[jbeale]

Here is an earlier thread on the subject:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?p=162223

it's been called "black sun" (or "purple sun") in past threads.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

The black-sun-sydrome became a friend that I on an off meet. Sometimes he's more visible, sometimes less and sometimes I roto him away.

Hans

 

[Justin Anderson]

Can we choose to have sensor protect on higher if we want?

I'd rather protect the sensor and fix the spots in post.

 

[jbeale]

For most of the examples I've seen, it's usually a small spot (sun, lighting instrument, welding arc, or reflections of those) which is colored light magenta, and entirely surrounded by a ring of fully blown-out white pixels. Based on that, it seems possible that a completely automatic tool could go through and generate a matte to take out all spots fitting that description. This is presuming that you don't often get real image data in that particular pattern.

 

[RyanKunkleman]

it is fairly easy to take out on the sun. you do however have to watch out. if you are going for a high key high contrast look you will start seeing this in all the bright highlights and it will take on the shape of the highlight. i remember at one point we had an option to choose the color of our spot. we ended up changing it to black.

 

[Brian Harbauer]

Perhaps the sensor is being pegged in the IR wavelength? I know the spot will be addressed, but in the meantime, has anyone done a test to see if an IR cut filter will get rid of it?

 

[Paul Kalbach]

Sensor protect spot

Sensor protect spot

I was shooting some cloud timelapse yesterday and decided not to include the sun in the shot, fearing that could damage the sensor due to the extended time of the timelapse shot. Does anybody have experience with sun timelapse shots?