Orbs!
 

On Halloween we did an outside broadcast from one of Wales' most haunted buildings, the Craig y Nos castle. I've never denied the existence of spirits but their source of origin is not something I trust.

Anyway, we did the show, everything went pretty well and plenty of photos were taken and on many of them, 'orbs' appeared. Do a google to form your own opinion of what they were. I won't offer any views other than to say I can guarantee the pictures are 100% genuine and have not been altered, enhanced or modified in any way. The lenses were constantly wiped clean and at no time did we see anything in the rooms which could have been mistaken for these objects. Unfortunately there was plenty of red-eyed people in the shots and in the last one, the scary looking bloke with the headphones and microphone......that was me! Enjoy!

Re: Orbs!
 

A few more....

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Let me guess - you were using a standard compact digital camera with a flash that was close to the lens yes?

The effect of orbs is caused by light particles relecting off water droplets in the air when the flash is positioned close to the lens on a camera.

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A flash was used on about 5 of about 45 occasions.

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Except all of the photos above used a flash. (bar possibly the second one)...

Either that or its dried water or juice on the lens.

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I'd suggest that it's something to do with the camera that took them, unless you're suggesting I managed to get a 'haunted' picture of a computer and a LEM :)

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Science museum in London?

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Nope! There was a lot of subdued lighting to create an 'atmosphere' but the flash was barely needed (therefore barely used)

Nope number 2: as stated above, the lenses were regularly wiped for the very reason you suggest.

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Indeedy :)

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looking at some of the pictures , it looks as though the living dead were in them ;) :disturbd: :disturbd: :D :D :D

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These 'orbs' could be anything - perhaps they're tricks of the light, who knows? I'm not claiming them to be anything other than what you see - images on pictures.

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You can clearly see a flash has been used in all but perhaps 1 or 2 of those photos mate. And in those two photographs you can see relection off items in the rooms which look suspiciously like flash bounce.

How did you manage to get red-eye BTW? You all been smokin weed out there too?

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I never actually said a flash was not used, but only on about a tenth of all the pictures we took that night.

Weed?? Me???

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Not implying you did mate - just saying that there are more than 5 images there that have the flash on which is parhaps not quite the "atmosphere" you described above ;)

From Canon Website here

What are the circular distortions that I see on some of my images?


Solutions
The most common cause / explanation of the problem is common to a lot of digital cameras with small CCDs, not just the Canon digital cameras. Such digital cameras have a greater depth of field compared to 35mm cameras due to their smaller focal distance. This in even higher degree when the camera is set to wide angle.

Because of the above, small dust particles, droplets of water, etc, drifting in the air close to the camera and not within depth of field for normal 35mm cameras, are within depth of field for digital cameras. Under normal circumstances this is not too big a problem, as these are very small. When flash is used its light illuminates these dust particles, water droplets, and these therefore show up extremely obvious on pictures taken. The problem is worsened for most digital compact cameras because the flash unit is positioned close to the lens barrel. Due to the setup and operation of digital cameras using small CCDââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s, there is not much that can be done about this phenomenon.

There are some measures which can be taken to prevent this problem from occurring as much as is possible.

1: Switch off flash in environments where there are likely to be small dust particles or water droplets in the air. Instead increase the gain / ISO value for the camera to compensate for this lack of flash. This is only possible with cameras for which the gain / ISO value can be adjusted.
2: Use an external slave flash unit further away from the camera and partially cover the cameraââ‚Ã⠀šÃ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s flash. These units are not available from Canon, but there are third party companies making such units. Make sure a slave flash unit is chosen which can be set to synchronize with the second flash as used by Powershot cameras. With Powershot cameras, the first flash is used to measure, the second is the actual flash.

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Ah well - they're good pictures anyway :D

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Science is a bitch aint it... :D

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Not at all!! Without it I'm destined to remain the rest of my days a slaphead...... :cry:

The pictures may well be what you suggest - remember I make no claims as to what the orbs are!

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Yea, Ive got orbs in some of the pictures that I have taken as well............damned annoying. At least I know its not my camera that is buggering up. :)

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Haha,
Your not the only one... ;)

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My missus tells me that they bang on about orbs on Most Haunted too.

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well thats rods & orbs sorted, then - can Yvette stop running around & screaming, now ;)

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Not since they resorted to throwing cutlery at her to get more viewers no.

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Oh I remember rods - those things even looked like insects!

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I'd have said that the concept of spirits as being the souls of the dead and capable of manifesting themselves in this world is incompatible with orthodox Christianity. Now, if you are saying that they are demons (as per the Gadarene Swine, for example), then, yes, they possibly are compatible with Christianity.

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I'm sure there's another thread around here somewhere which is discussing subjects like that... ;)

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I saw a documentary on sky about rods, it was sure interesting.

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Looks like watermarks to me...

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Two actually, and I've been steering well clear of them! :)

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I subscribe to the popular theory that "ghosts" are basically "recordings" made on natural materials in a house like stone, wood etc by strong emotions.
Basically, this means that a very strong emotion can imprint itself in your surroundings and manifest itself in the future as Poltergeist activity or other supernatural events.
When you're close to death I guess those emotions must be pretty strong so it's no wonder that we often hear of "replays" of events that happened long ago.

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That's quite a good theory and not one I've heard before....

My own personal theory is that 'spirits' and 'apparitions' are temporal anomolies.

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You can't prove it, there's no proof, science says it can't be done, blah blah blah....







....sorry, I think I was being possessed by the spirits of other forum members there for a second :D

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I think it's quite plausible when you think of what the human mind is capable of - and we only use something like 5% of it consciencely.
I once knew someone who had one of those "phantom pregnancies" where they convince themselves that they are pregnant so well that their womb actually expands and their breasts start leaking milk!

There is definitely a subconscious part of our brain that acts as a sixth sense and maybe it's this which leaves some form of message when it dies on the surroundings to warn others in some way - you know how you go into some place and you "just don't feel right" about it?
The thing is, this subconscious is at work all the time, we witness it every day - you know how you are on the bus or sitting at your desk at work and you sense that you're being watched and you look up and someone is staring at you? :D
Women apparently feel this more than men, try it out - look at some woman in the street who would have no reason to turn to look at you and you can bet that 99% of the time she will turn to look. :disturbd:

I'm glad I studied Psychology. :p:

There's also the thing about the dressing gown on the bedroom door but that's another story... :p:

Re: Orbs!
 

The classic "orb" is dust illuminated by a camera flash, not ON the lens (that would be so dispersed that it would just lose contrast, but close to it.

It MAY be possible to get the same type of orb without flash, if the light souce is behind and close to the camera position.

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I was watching a prog last night about a little lad who was dying of cancer! He told his mum he often saw his guardian Angel and his mum took this as being an imaginary friend, right up until he started saying he could see his Gran and Grandad (Who he never new).

Anyway one night there was a fund raiser for cancer research and loads of pics were taken on different cameras by diff people! Three cameras had these same "orbs" on them!! All the cameras were different makes with different film and all developed at different processing shops, yet all had these spots!

Now it can be argued away that it reflections or the flash BUT could it be that these were infact angels like the little lad said? Hmmmm

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Yeah and they tried to "prove" that they weren't insects by showing a hovering, in-focus bee as an example of what an insect on video would look like.
Problem is, get that bee moving and focus behind it and hey presto, you get a rod!