Recently I was in the Camargue and spent some time photographing the white horses and I attach one of the images I took. To take this I was standing in what is best described as a swamp. The herd of horses ran back and forth splashing through a large pool of muddy water and as you can see caused much spray and water to fly around.

You don't have to look too closely at the image to notice a coloured band running diagonally across the image and I have been trying to work out what has caused this. It could be water on the lens but I would not have expected to see what to my eyes appears to be a fairly even band. It may be a reed that I had missed and not moved out of the way but I'm not convinced about that either.

This is the JPG image (I shot CRAW and JPG) taken with the A700 and 16-80CZ. No PP adjustment other than levels.

Any suggestions as to what may have caused this would be appreciated. No other image appears to have this problem and so I doubt it is a problem with either the camera or lens.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Hi Ossie,

You could be right about the reed, though of course I didn't see how the circumstances were. If there was wind and we can see from the photo that the horses were in full throttle, there could be a momentary dry reed stuck on the front element only to fall away at a later photo.

I know something of the like can happen and it doesn't even have to be a bulky piece of reed. I have long hair which can get in front of the lens in strong or mild winds and even one single tress can have this effect. I have several good photos that have these diagonal bands at different angles, all running evenly across.

All that said, I hope no other technical problem is there for your camera.

Yildiz

ps. I can show some examples from my archives if you feel you need some reassurance.

Yildiz is right - the most likely cause is a reed or stem of something. It's a good picture from this subject. It is also possible that a streak of mud on a filter splashed up could have caused it, but you would expect to see it again unless wiped off.

David

Yildiz and David

Many thanks for your input and reassurance. My efforts to clear my field of view at the time were not as thorough as they might have been. A lesson learned.

Ossie

Did you happen to notice some flying saucers?
Definitely reed. If it were a sensor problem it should've been with a vertical/horizontal streak.