I used an arrow to point out some of the less obvious flares that you might not notice such as the corona (the big circle around the light source –– in this case, the sun) and the infamous “green orb” that so many people capture on their own photos and ask about later, as they tend to not notice it as they are taking the photo. These photos were also taken with my iPhone. The photo below was taken with my iPhone. Lens flares can occur in any type of camera. This is a photo snapped and posted to Twitter (from space) by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly from the International Space Station of the sun setting over Earth’s horizon. Yes, lens flares can even occur in space. So notorious, in fact, someone created an entire YouTube video explaining how lens flares are created, all in the context of JJ Abrams movies. JJ Abrams, for example, is notorious for his usage of lens flares in his movies.

They also appear frequently in commercials, TV shows and movies these days – much to the annoyance of some fans. The photo below is a screen cap from a car commercial in which you will see several lens flares resulting from the sun in the top left corner of the screen. Once you start to notice lens flares, you can literally see them EVERYWHERE and debunking the kinds of “orbs” becomes pretty easy. In the other, the settings were changed to allow less light. One of them was shot specifically to use lens flares for a creative effect. If you shoot with a lens hood, you may be able to prevent the glare entirely. The more light you have your camera set to allow in, the more pronounced the flares will be. Lens flares are simply light that is being reflected through the multiple glass pieces within your camera lens when there is an outside light source (aside from your camera’s own flash) in the photo such as the sun, the moon, a lamp, fire, a flashlight, or even your own camera’s flash being reflected in a mirror. A modern camera lens is actually an assemblage of multiple lenses called elements and housed in a barrel, like so:Ī lens flare is created when light reflects off of one or more than one of these many lenses.

Not only are they explainable, they’re also extremely easy to replicate as I will be showing you here in this blog post. The VAST majority of the photos that I’ve seen are not of a paranormal nature and are quite easily debunked by a single phenomena: lens flares. This post is dedicated to debunking orbs that are, in fact, a natural photography phenomenon known as lens flares. As you may have noticed by now, tons of people are interested in photographing orbs and people online are constantly posting photos where they’ve captured something on camera that appears to be out of the ordinary, wondering whether or not they’ve photographed an orb.

Small orbs in videos