Warning: stacking filters gave me a weird halo effect for months

I was out shooting Orion back in January and stacked a UV filter with a light pollution filter on my Canon. Looked fine through the viewfinder but when I got the images on my computer there was this weird ring around every bright star. Took me about 4 months to figure out it was internal reflections between the two pieces of glass. Now I only stack if I absolutely have to. Anyone else run into ghosting or halos from multiple filters?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_rowan28d ago

Mannn that sucks to have wasted 4 months on something like that. I did almost the exact same thing with a polarizer and a UV filter on a night shoot last year and got the same weird ghosting. It drove me crazy because I kept checking my gear thinking something was scratched or dirty. Ended up binning a whole set of northern lights photos before I figured it out. I guess glass layers just bounce light back and forth especially with bright sources like stars or streetlights. Did you find that it was worse on the edges or did it show up everywhere?

gavin8028d ago

Actually it's usually worse in the corners since that's where internal reflections tend to concentrate with wide lenses.