Artifacts while shooting against the light of the sun

Hello dear. I'm new to the Olympus system. Own E-M1 mk III + 100-400 lens. In the photos I take at sunset and I have this light in the shot, I see a "grid of rectangles", or whatever I call it. Best if I could send you a photo. My question is whether this is normal behavior or something is wrong. Thank you, Tomas.

I enclose a 1: 1 cut-out

TomzeLhotky wrote:

I have no filter on the lens

You also deleted the EXIF. So I have not a clue why your picture looks noisy.

Henry

Against the sun I would use 1/500 second or shorter at f11 and 64 ISO. Your photo shows 1/6 second. To me it looks like you get artifacts because of all that over-exposure.

Was the camera on Manual Exposure for night shots on the day before?

Henry

It appears to be a reflection of the sensor on the back of the lens that is getting captured.

It may have to do with the lens coating on the back that does not have anti reflection or the PDAF pixels (though it does not look like it and would be much less)

Try a strongly backlit shot with another lens and see if you get anything, if not is just the coating of the lens and there is nothing you can do about it just avoid shooting in those conditions

if instead the issue repeats those are the PDAF pixels creating a pattern. There is nothing you can do

Interceptor121 wrote:

It appears to be a reflection of the sensor on the back of the lens that is getting captured.

It may have to do with the lens coating on the back that does not have anti reflection or the PDAF pixels (though it does not look like it and would be much less)

Try a strongly backlit shot with another lens and see if you get anything, if not is just the coating of the lens and there is nothing you can do about it just avoid shooting in those conditions

Yes to have good fully coated optics is an important virtue of Pro level lenses, that many fail to appreciate the value of when testing.

I can not see the exif while viewing on my phone. Do we know what 100-400 lens was used?

Adrian Harris wrote:

Interceptor121 wrote:

It appears to be a reflection of the sensor on the back of the lens that is getting captured.

It may have to do with the lens coating on the back that does not have anti reflection or the PDAF pixels (though it does not look like it and would be much less)

Try a strongly backlit shot with another lens and see if you get anything, if not is just the coating of the lens and there is nothing you can do about it just avoid shooting in those conditions

Yes to have good fully coated optics is an important virtue of Pro level lenses, that many fail to appreciate the value of when testing.

I can not see the exif while viewing on my phone. Do we know what 100-400 lens was used?

I think he took a picture of the LCD from the phone. It is an Olympus 100-400mm (sigma)

Sigma does have a track record of skipping certain finesse features on mid range items and this lens is not a PRO range item

I have been taking pictures since the awn of Digital Photography, used Canon, Sony Olympus and Panasonic cameras, even a Sony camcorder and a variety of cell phones, and shoot regularly against the light (setting sun). I have never seen an image like that! Not even similar.

Pedagydusz wrote:

I have been taking pictures since the awn of Digital Photography, used Canon, Sony Olympus and Panasonic cameras, even a Sony camcorder and a variety of cell phones, and shoot regularly against the light (setting sun). I have never seen an image like that! Not even similar.

I have instead and not a coincidence a Sigma lens

TomzeLhotky wrote:

Hello dear. I'm new to the Olympus system. Own E-M1 mk III + 100-400 lens. In the photos I take at sunset and I have this light in the shot, I see a "grid of rectangles", or whatever I call it. Best if I could send you a photo. My question is whether this is normal behavior or something is wrong. Thank you, Tomas.

I enclose a 1: 1 cut-out

You're seeing the PDAF pixels.

I have downloaded the raw file and opened it in OM Workspace (newest version) and I see a pattern in part of the shadow area as well. The following is a screen dump of this image in OM WS :

and for those who need to look in to the EXIF data, here they are as well :

./Bahman

whumber wrote:

TomzeLhotky wrote:

Hello dear. I'm new to the Olympus system. Own E-M1 mk III + 100-400 lens. In the photos I take at sunset and I have this light in the shot, I see a "grid of rectangles", or whatever I call it. Best if I could send you a photo. My question is whether this is normal behavior or something is wrong. Thank you, Tomas.

I enclose a 1: 1 cut-out

You're seeing the PDAF pixels.

Also my guess and why I don't like the idea of on sensor PDAF, but I wouldn't rule out a processor issue if it were me. I'd look carefully at other images taken afterward in different condition to see if the pattern is visible. That said, I am not sure what we're looking at here. What is the light wedge on the top right corner? The OP isn't showing us the full un-edited image. For all we know this is a photo of his computer screen and we're all wasting out time speculating.

What do you get when you develop the RAW file in camera?

https://blog.kasson.com/a7riv/pdaf-striping-in-the-sony-a7riv/

Horshack has also done work on this as well.  Jim and Horshack might respond if you post on the PST forum.

Andrew