I took a few pictures during a severe thunderstorm with my ipod. The thunderstorm was over the house and around the city. Lightning was bolting across the sky, from cloud to cloud and also branching out to the ground. Some of the pictures came out with horizontal lines and variation of shading between the lines (not lightning). It reminds me of pointing a video camera at a TV and seeing horizontal lines because of frequency differences. I wondered if the electrical storm did something similar or what else may have caused it? Just curious....
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I can think of two possible explanations.
The first is that the intense bright light is overwhelming portions of the CCD (light sensor chip used by digital cameras to take photos). Its possible that the voltage across a portions of the chip was over nominal voltage; if the CCD is buffered /protected from over voltage on a line by line basis the effect you are seeing may correspond to a line of pixel data being corrupted or being sent as a straight line of all the same value. Each line of pixels corresponds to a line of individually registering sensors on the CCD; the date from those is registered a a line at a time. Some of those lines are failing to properly register and sending bad data which is in the form of or interpreted as an entire line of the same value.
The second possibility is the same effect described above but being caused by non-visible electromagnetic radiation produced by lightning. Lightning does produce a weak emp which could cause improper signalling within the camera's circuity - particularly the chip that acts as a light sensor. This could cause what are effectively short circuits and produce bad lines of pixel data as you have seen.
This problem is not all that common, though I have heard of people having similarly corrupted images when using DSLR cameras. Try using a polarizing lens filter; if that fails then perhaps take images from inside a vehicle.
The first is that the intense bright light is overwhelming portions of the CCD (light sensor chip used by digital cameras to take photos). Its possible that the voltage across a portions of the chip was over nominal voltage; if the CCD is buffered /protected from over voltage on a line by line basis the effect you are seeing may correspond to a line of pixel data being corrupted or being sent as a straight line of all the same value. Each line of pixels corresponds to a line of individually registering sensors on the CCD; the date from those is registered a a line at a time. Some of those lines are failing to properly register and sending bad data which is in the form of or interpreted as an entire line of the same value.
The second possibility is the same effect described above but being caused by non-visible electromagnetic radiation produced by lightning. Lightning does produce a weak emp which could cause improper signalling within the camera's circuity - particularly the chip that acts as a light sensor. This could cause what are effectively short circuits and produce bad lines of pixel data as you have seen.
This problem is not all that common, though I have heard of people having similarly corrupted images when using DSLR cameras. Try using a polarizing lens filter; if that fails then perhaps take images from inside a vehicle.
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It sounds like an overloaded CCD pixel bleeding along the readout direction. There are many electrical flaws in CCDs that will cause straight striping.