What the??? The things you find on your camera.

[Ezookiel]

I can't even locate on the exif data the time the shot was taken, only the time I opened it up yesterday, to even begin to decypher what this was, or where and when it happened. I can only guess an accidental activation.
But it has a rather funky kind of look to it. My guess is I'm not the first to find an accidental shot on their camera.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7090/7192781294_fe701de961_o.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ezookiel/7192781294/)
Brindies - Janette & Eddie_001_medium (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ezookiel/7192781294/) by Ezookiel (http://www.flickr.com/people/ezookiel/), on Flickr

[I @ M]

This might help you track it down.

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[Mary Anne]

I didn't have any problems reading it on exif viewer either the shutter speed got me.

[Ezookiel]

Ok. I viewed the exif data on the photo directly within the download directory on my Windows computer, with right click, "properties", "Details", and the read the exif data there, which had the exposure time, camera model etc, but it showed time and date as being the time and date the image was downloaded. Whereas this appears to be the correct time the photo was taken (minus 1 hour for DST because I haven't changed the time on the camera).

So... now I know it was about 8:55pm on the 7th.

The camera was set to "Program" which is where I leave it for emergency shots, it's like Auto but allows me to not use the flash or TO use the flash, or change ISO etc if I wish. So quite a good multipurpose emergency photo setting for those "Quick grab the camera" types of moments.

So... the 16 seconds was the CAMERA'S idea of the correct shutter speed for wherever the shot was taken.

That makes sense, it was probably dark at 8:55pm. But those lights have me intriqued. I would normally be home at 8:55pm and playing on AP, and they look nothing like any lights at my house.
There appeared to be smoke, or haze, in the image, so I thought campfire, which would explain the red glow, but none of the other lights, and I wasn't camping on the 7th.

Oh well. Still a mystery. A rather abstractly pretty one, but still a mystery.

Thanks for the help with the EXIF. I have exif viewer in Firefox for viewing it elsewhere, but the way I got it from within the Windows downloads directory obviously isn't quite the ideal method.

[Mary Anne]

The reason those lights and shapes are like that is because it was taken at a slow shutter speed and most likely hand held.
To get a sharp image at that slow speed your camera Has to be on a Tripod

[Duane Pipe]

A slow shutter speed and me at that time of night:lol2:
I think that you might have attended a function that served free beer but you just cant remember:D

[Ezookiel]

It's been solved. My daughter made a comment that finally dropped the penny for me. She said that the stuff I had thought was smoke looked like the sun or moon behind clouds.
It suddenly dawned. I'd been down the local shops grabbing some milk late the other night, when I saw the remains of the big moon from the other day, hidden behind a weird cloud that made the moon look like it was behind bars, with a waterfall of misty rain falling from under it, so grabbed out the camera, stopped the car right in the middle of the carpark entry, (at 9:00pm there aren't many other cars to worry about, and because in this carpark there are so many trees around that this was the ONLY spot I'd actually be able to see the moon) and attempted to grab a shot. In the mad rush to get the shot off before a car came, or before the cloud "bars" moved off the moon, I forgot to change anything on the camera, and it decided on a really long exposure, I had that "D'Oh" moment when the camera didn't stop taking the pic, and pulled the camera back in off the windowsill where I'd wedged myself and it (in place of a tripod) and turned the camera around to turn it off to cancel the long exposure, but before I could try again, another car arrived and I had to drive off so that I wasn't blocking them, and by the time I came back around the block, the moon was out of the clouds, and it wasn't worth attempting another. Put the camera away and forgot all about it.
The lights in the photo are my dashboard, all smooshed to heck and back as I pulled the camera back in the window to turn it off.

Now the image is much less interesting. I was enjoying the mystery, though there is still some mystery. The Red circular lights are my dashboard, the Rectangular sections with the yellow stripes are my GPS/Media Centre Screen, but what the very white/yellow swirly lights are is still a mystery, as I have nothing like them in the car, and they're way too bunched up and intense to be carpark lights.
Still a bit of a bummer to now know what it is. It was quite interesting trying to work it out. Well, to me it was.

[ricktas]

If you rotate it, that could be the ghost of Cap'n Jack Sparrow....

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[Ezookiel]

LOL.
Thanks Rictas. Not sure what he was doing in my car. Not sure he'll find much gold anywhere around me ;)

[mongo]

Mongo likes it - it could pass for modern abstract

[Allie]

If you rotate it, that could be the ghost of Cap'n Jack Sparrow....

89133

I like it, that was an investigative and interesting discovery.:wd: