An example of vignetting in a photograph

Vignetting is a common feature of photographs produced by toy cameras such as this shot taken with a Holga

In photography and optics, vignetting is a reduction in image brightness in the image periphery compared to the image center. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (900x608, 155 KB) Summary Picture of the Rio Paraguay I took in June 2005; in the far distance is Asuncion. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (900x608, 155 KB) Summary Picture of the Rio Paraguay I took in June 2005; in the far distance is Asuncion. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 595 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (700 × 705 pixel, file size: 108 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Swanson Tennis Center at Gustavus Adolphus College. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 595 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (700 × 705 pixel, file size: 108 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Swanson Tennis Center at Gustavus Adolphus College. ... Chinas Holga camera takes medium-format photographs on 120 film. ... A sample Holga image showing its characteristic vignetting. ... Photography [fәtɑgrәfi:],[foʊtɑgrәfi:] is the process of recording pictures by means of capturing light on a light-sensitive medium, such as a film or sensor. ... Table of Opticks, 1728 Cyclopaedia Optics ( appearance or look in ancient Greek) is a branch of physics that describes the behavior and properties of light and the interaction of light with matter. ... Generally, a periphery is a boundary or outer part of any space or body. ...

Vignetting is sometimes used for creative effect (such as to draw attention to the center of the frame). A photographer may deliberately choose a lens which is known to produce vignetting. It can also be produced with the use of special filters or post-processing procedures. In photography, a filter is a camera accessory consisting of an optical filter that can be inserted in the optical path. ... UPIICSA IPN - Binary image Image processing is any form of information processing for which the input is an image, such as photographs or frames of video; the output is not necessarily an image, but can be for instance a set of features of the image. ...

Vignetting is also used to describe unwanted darkening of the corner of a photograph.

Causes

There are three different causes of vignetting:

• Mechanical (or physical) vignetting
• Optical vignetting
• Pixel vignetting

Mechanical or physical vignetting

Mechanical or physical vignetting occurs when light beams emanating from object points located off-axis are partially blocked by external objects such as thick or stacked filters, secondary lenses, and (misaligned) lens hoods, as well as various elements positioned inside the lens to limit aberrations, causing brightness to drop in the image periphery. Mechanical vignetting is sensitive to aperture. Stopping down a lens prone to mechanical vignetting one or two stops will remove the vignetting effect. Aberration (Latin ab, from or away + errare, to wander), a deviation or wandering, especially used in the figurative sense as: In ethics, a deviation from the truth. ... a big (1) and a small (2) aperture For other uses, see Aperture (disambiguation). ...

Optical vignetting

Optical vignetting is light falloff that is inherent in the lens design and is approximated by the cos⁴(θ) or "cosine fourth" law, where light falloff is roughly proportional to the fourth power of the cosine of θ (where θ is the angle off axis). Wide-angle designs and the lens designs used in compact cameras and rangefinders are more prone to optical vignetting than longer lenses and retrofocus lenses used in SLR cameras because these designs result in a larger theta. Optical vignetting can be reduced by stopping down. The vignetting that remains at lower f-stops can be handled by using a gradual grey filter (which is lighter towards the periphery) or by image processing. A lens. ... In mathematics, the trigonometric functions are functions of an angle, important when studying triangles and modeling periodic phenomena. ... The Retrofocus photographic lens was invented in France in 1950 by Angenieux, and is characterized by a large negative meniscus lens element up front followed by four or five small elements in the rear. ... The single-lens reflex (SLR) is a type of camera that uses a movable mirror placed between the lens and the film to project the image seen through the lens to a matte focusing screen. ...

Pixel vignetting

Pixel vignetting only affects digital cameras and is caused by the physical depth of the photon wells that capture light in today's digital cameras. Just like more light reaches the bottom of a well when the sun is in zenith, light hitting a photon well at a right angle will have greater impact than light hitting it at an oblique angle. Most digital cameras use built-in image processing to compensate for optical vignetting and pixel vignetting when converting raw sensor data to standard image formats such as JPEG or TIFF.
In computing, JPEG (pronounced JAY-peg; IPA: ) is a commonly used standard method of compression for photographic images. ... This article is about TIFF, the computer image format. ...

Vignetting can be used to artistic effect, as demonstrated in this panorama

Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 140 pixelsFull resolution (5000 × 877 pixel, file size: 1. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 140 pixelsFull resolution (5000 × 877 pixel, file size: 1. ...

References

• Van Walree's webpage on vignetting uses some unorthodox terminology but illustrates very well the physics and optics of mechanical and optical vignetting.
• Peter B. Catrysse, Xinqiao Liu, and Abbas El Gamal: QE Reduction due to Pixel Vignetting in CMOS Image Sensors; in Morley M. Blouke, Nitin Sampat, George M. Williams, Jr., Thomas Yeh (ed.): Sensors and Camera Systems for Scientific, Industrial, and Digital Photography Applications, Proceedings of SPIE, vol. 3965 (2000).