So I’m stumped on this one. It was my usual muzzle flash photography setup (strobe camera left but slightly behind), usual settings, etc. I can’t think of a single reason outside sensor damage that would cause this. It’s not a consistent issue across the images either.

I spoke to an acquaintance that’s a high end pro firearm photographer and his thoughts were lens flare (but it’s a straight column across the image) or sensor damage as well. I’m going to test for that in the morning, but I hope not.

Any ideas?  Originally I thought it was an artifact of the denoise software, but it’s on the raw file.

Attached File

The brown on the gloves.

Not lens flare

You had the shutter open then tripped the flash.

Rear Curtain sync would make an image that trails and ends in a sharp in focus image. If the flash trips closer to the time the shutter opens the location of blur from ambient light won’t be trailing. Best guess is this is caused by some ambient light or a reflection where the flash bounced off a secondary reflective panel etc.

Out of focus highlights take on the shape of the maximum aperture of the lens. If you bring the lens all the way to max aperture then place a black card with a heart shape cut out then every out of focus light becomes heart shape.

Similarly reflective surfaces can be made to show a shaped light reflection by placing a ghost shape cut out in front of a light box and taking a photo with a glass bottle the reflection of the light box is now ghost shape not rectangular.

Mixed lighting ambient + flash girl in hallway long white dress hands holding door frame on each side with her being very still . Add a fan blowing the dress. Ambient picks up the motion of fan blowing the dress, flash creates a sharp image the result looks like a ghost floating.

The vertical color change line on the shotgun has something to do with the digital sensor

I can't recreate the issue so far, so maybe it was just a read error due to the temps.  It hasn't happened before that I'm aware of, but that doesn't mean it can't happen.  Going to set up the strobes and take some shots of a v flat to see if I get anything odd.  If it pops up, I guess it's back to Nikon for a look at the sensor.

First curtain sync for the flash as 2nd would have positioning issues between the shooter and muzzle flash.  The flash I don't have issues with, I've used this setup fairly well with my muzzle flash shots.  Just trying to figure out what the heck was going on with the contrast/color band mid frame.

If it stops doing it you have solved the problem. Sometimes it’s not possible to figure it out.

Another thing you can play with is use a plate of glass put background paper over it cut a hole the size of a beer mug put the beer mug over the hole light it from below and add a strip light to the left or right . This way the beer doesn’t look like motor oil.
Have fun.