Message posted by gary on August 10, 2001 at 23:58:38 PST:

I don't think it would be a lens reflection since those problems tend to occur with "specular" images, i.e. a very bright light in the image. The reflections show up as flare in the lens. [BTW, the flare gets worse as you stop down the lens. Take some sunset photos and you will see this is the case. There are tricks to get around that problem, though a bit off topic.]

There are distortions that can occur due to the shutter mechanism. In most modern 35mm cameras, the shutter is really a traveling slit that exposes a small portion of the film at a time. If the object being photographed is moving, you can get some distortion. This web page has such an example:

http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/text-slit-scan.html
[OK, an extreme example, but you should get the idea.]

The faster the shutter speed, the greater the chance of such an error. Of course, at a slower shutter speed you would just get more blur, so the intent isn't to encourage anyone to use slow speeds but rather to be aware that at high speeds these distortions can occur.

In Reply to: Re: Joerg and Gary's "Mothra" picture posted by Keith on August 10, 2001 at 13:17:06 PST:

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