This photo was sent to us for analysis by Rachel, from her recent trip to New Orleans. Taken in daylight by her sister with an iPhone 7, the photo contains an anomaly: she is apparently missing half her right hand, with which she was holding a medium-sized drink cup - also strangely invisible. We initially thought this was due to subject movement, but none is apparent anywhere in the photo, which shows sharp detail throughout; and the Exif data (printed in full below) gives the shutter speed at 1/429th of a second - brief enough an exposure to freeze all but the most rapid movement. The anomalous area is shown pixel-for-pixel in the detail photo below. It is unaltered from the original we received. We suspect this may be to do with the phone camera's image stabilization system but we don't have any way of exploring that possibility. An internet search did not reveal any similar faults with iPhone7 photos, other than complaints of a watercolour-like effect. The predominance of the bright red fabrics may also be a factor. We don't know what is going on here. Can anyone explain? We would like to hear from you if you know the cause of this anomaly, and/or if you know of similar effects occurring in photos taken using the Apple iPhone7 or any other cellphone camera. Thank you. James Gilberd, New Zealand Strange Occurrences Society Please note: the photos on this page are copyright. The owner has given us permission to publish them here but please do not copy or republish them without permission. Feel free to circulate the link to this page, though. The following is the Exif data from the photo, as shown by Exif Reader.
4 Comments
Wynde Saddy
21/8/2017 09:24:14 am
I am Rachel's sister. I took the photo and still have no clue as to why the photo turned out missing her hand and the drink. All other photos taken that day are normal using my same phone. Please let me know if you find an explanation
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James Gilberd
21/8/2017 11:35:04 am
Thanks, Wynde.
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Michael
6/1/2018 01:49:16 am
James, Hello from London, was checking your post and chanced upon this conundrum. My suspicion is the camera/phone was in HDR mode. Can't ascertain this from the meta data, but if you are in HDR shooting mode on iphones, the phone will take take multiple bracketed images and then stitch them together to create a higher dynamic range image. Better looking pics, downside is you need to avoid movement as you can get artifacts, same with Pano mode.
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Rachel Mauffray
7/3/2019 08:46:41 am
I was standing completely still.
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Ectoplasmic Residueis a blog by James Gilberd - leader and co-founder of Strange Occurrences. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the Strange Occurrences team. AuthorJames Gilberd is an amateur paranormalist, writer and musician, and a professional photographer, living in Wellington, New Zealand. Archives
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