Hey guys, happy holidays; I hope everyone is well these days. I have a question about an interesting phenomenon that I observed shooting in an industrial yard last week. Unfortunately I couldn't get permission to enter the place so I had to shoot through the 15-foot high chain-link fence. I got my camera up as close as possible (the lens was directly against the fence) and tried to line the "sweet spot" of the lens up with the hole in the fence as best as possible. But no matter how I aligned it, there was always a piece of fence (i.e., very thick metal wire) that passed directly across the lens. With no other option, I composed and shot several negatives at f/22, thinking there would be some defect in my originals that I would have to deal with.
But as far as I can tell there is no effect from having had the wire fence directly in front of my lens! I can't find a soft spot in the negatives, nor is there any area that seems darker or otherwise lacking in quality. My every intuition tells me there should be some effect from shooting through the fence but I can't find any. If I put my eye up to a fence like that, it would see a dark fuzzy line, and some part of the image would be blocked by the wire, but that doesn't seem to happen with a camera. Does anyone know the optics of this strange phenomenon, or have other comments or thoughts?
~cj
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