Okay well I know it sounds like I've been watching too much Ghost Hunters but I was out shooting with an IR modded D70, with 850nm filter, and captured something I can't quite explain

It was a sunny afternoon out in the Hocking Hills region of South East Ohio and I was shooting along the rim trail of a place called Conkles Hollow.

Took probably 150 shots that day, just playing with the new camera, and all was normal.

Just typical IR shots like this


or this


and a bunch of others but when going through the images I came across something really weird, this


Now this was standing near the edge of about a 200 foot drop down and there was no one in front of me, and nothing over my lens. I took three shots as I had the camera on bracket mode and got this weird black shape in all three frames and I've got no clue what it could be

Here it is as the camera captured it in IR before conversion to black and white (which is how IR images come out of the camera if you didn't know)




Its very weird because its not totally black as you can see some lights coming through down at the bottom of the frame, and also it appears to behind those bushes. I don't know how it would be possible to have something blocking part of them like that.

Now shooting IR does produce some weird flare and artifacts, far more than normal light in fact, and you can see where the sun is in the frame, but there is no detail in the black shape at all. Maxing out the exposure on the raw file, as well as turning up the levels does nothing, its all 0,0,0 RGB values.

I frankly can't figure it out.

It was only in those 3 frames and the camera seemed to work fine in additional shooting that day

Also just for a laugh I tried typing Hocking Hills hauntings into Google and there actually is some reported cases about that and crazily enough, they specifically mention Conkles Hollow.

These cliffs are very dangerous and there have been documented cases of people falling to their deaths, as well as they had some hangings take place in this area.

The paranormal site reported strange mist and also orbs showing up in photos

, Crazy (and creepy) I know but I really am left wondering about this

Well we are just shy of 100 page views and not one person has any suggestions as to what this might be ?

Color me chilled...Only thing I can think of, although highly highly unlikely, is a focal plane effect (i.e. shooting higher than max sync speed)...But you would have needed a flash to produce that rolling shutter effect, which I gather you didn't.

I had a D70s just die on me recently, and it's on its second trip back to Nikon to service what started as a bglod... Sticky shutter blades maybe?

Played with any ouija boards lately? Made your yearly sacrifice to the Nikon gods?

Anyhoo - crazy capture man...and timely I might add

my first thought was part of the shutter curtain, but the problem hasn't repeated itself and also I would think if that was it it would be a solid black shape, not allowing the bushes to show up in front on parts of the image.

OK, now I'm afraid to go out at night!

Cool stuff guys.

The D70 sensor does produce funny artefacts like that when it reaches very high brightness levels. Could it be something like that in IR?

Alternatively, it looks a bit like the Mothman.

I see those pics and I hear the XFiles theme running through my head...

panos.v wrote:
The D70 sensor does produce funny artefacts like that when it reaches very high brightness levels. Could it be something like that in IR?

Alternatively, it looks a bit like the Mothman.



Now that is interesting information. I haven't had the camera all that long so I haven't had any other experiences like that but sounds reasonable and I'll have to try testing that a bit more.

Its weird because the parts that are black are all 0,0,0 on the RGB values, just no detail at all. Like there was nothing there in the slightest which doesn't make sense


What it produces these artifacts is it an irregular shape like that or does it tend to do it around highlights ?

If it was a solid band it would make more sense to me than how parts of those shrubs are laced in and out of the dark area

The D70 has an electronic shutter at speeds over flash x-sync so in high brightness it will blow out and produce weird shaped artefacts around the blown out area. Maybe in IR it turns out the other way, black?

Thats possible but what is weird is that the part of the sky where you can see the sun, the brightest part of the frame, the detail while blown out in parts, is still more or less rendered to look like the sun.

So by that logic, I would think if you pointed the camera at the sky, you'd get a weird artifact around the sun or whatever the brightest source is, but that didn't see to be the case.

I've also taken the camera to the beach a couple times, as well as some sand dudes and did lots of shooting in very bright conditions and never have experienced this

I'm not saying its not the case, but still doesn't quite add up as to why the part of the frame thats not the brightest would get rendered so weird.

Also why some midtone highlights would show up in parts of it and not others

Hmmm...you say it was near a 200ft drop. Could it be an updraft of air that affects IR in that area? No idea if that is possible, just saying!

This is interesting!

Yeah, it is interesting. I think we need Mulder and Scully on the job

I need to buy one of those EMF detectors off Ebay and go back to the location and see if there is some weird spike around that rock outcropping

Cool stuff!

R