The legend of the out-of-focus woman

Last weekend we went geocaching and I took many pictures. It was a wonderful day: dry, no wind. Ideal to enjoy the reflections of the city on the waters. Crispy winter day!

But... back home, when I downloaded the images, I almost had a heart-attack. All of the images had a blurry quality. They were not sharp and I started to panic because I couldn't figure out why! I was sure I didn't shake on some of them. Why was that then? The freaking blurry ghost took possession of the camera?

I started to think that my old and trusty 50mm lens was broken. Maybe it fell on the ground somewhere and I didn't see it, maybe the focus got uncalibrated! And this is how I came after that most of the new SLR cameras allow you to compensate focus for your lenses. The Canon 5D MarkII allows you to register a compensation for each of your lenses. This compensation factor is stored into the camera and once you set it, the compensation will take effect whenever you use that lens.

I used this article to test all the focus options. And in all of the tests the lens was showing pretty sharp. No need to compensate. And despite of that, I couldn't find on the pictures what would be the exact focus spot, which means that no calibrations would be possible.

What was that then? I went to sleep and had nightmares that the sensor on my camera was dirty, that the camera was broken or something like that. I went through a normal day but I was very anxious to get back home and go further on my research.

After some time looking at the blurry pictures, it came to my mind the time when Thomas was two or three years old. He loved to take pictures but he never understood that fingers and lenses do not combine very well. The soft focus on my pictures resembled those from when he used to put his fingers on the glass of the lenses.

A bell was ringing into my head: my lens was just dirty! What happens is that light hits the lens and diffuses, creating those "halos"  and softening the image.

My conclusion: check if lenses are clean before going out to shoot!

Photo taken with the mysterious blurry lens

Photo taken with a camera that used to be manipulated by a kid