One of the biggest topics of debate among those in and outside the paranormal community centers around the topic of orbs.  Everyone at some point has captured an orb in a photo and most people who are paranormally inclined will, at one time or another, claim that this occurrence is a spirit.  If the photo was taken as a family gathering of some kind most people will claim that it’s the spirit of a deceased loved one.  The unfortunate fact is that 99% of orb photos are easily dismissed as what is often called “environmental interference”. However, as is often the case with anything paranormal, if someone wants to believe that an orb photo is an orb of a long departed relative visiting a family reunion, that’s what they are going to see.  But, if you really want to know the difference between true orbs and false positives and how to capture true orbs, read on!

So if 99% of the orb photos out there are not true orbs, what about that other 1%? Let’s first talk about the different types of orbs there are, the way they are captured, and how to examine your photos.

Where did you take your picture?
First, it’s very important to understand that no matter where you’ve taken your photo, whether it’s inside or outside, dust, moisture, and other airborne particles will always be a factor.  Even when you’re in an indoor space that you don’t detect any obvious dust in, there are going to be airflow streams that you may not be able to detect clearly that can cause particles to move through the air that will create false positives in your photos.

When you’re inside the obvious places that will be difficult to capture orbs in will be the obvious dusty and damp places like basements and attics.  Indoors you will easily capture what looks like orbs that are actual dust particles, reflections, some moisture, and even tiny lights from other sources that you may not have noticed or realized at the time.

When you photograph outside you’ll find moisture to be on of your biggest contenders with bugs being a close second.  Bugs are one of those things that many people will discount because if the bug wasn’t large and obvious they assume that can’t be it.  Sadly, there are so many tiny gnats and other itty bitty bugs that, if captured in motion in front of a camera, will either look like light trails, orbs, or other “ghostly” visions.  Photos taken outdoors also have the issue of dust and dirt being easily blown around with the wind and breezes.  And any photos taken on misty nights or near any sort of water source, no matter how still, creates a great chance for being a false positive.

What did you take your photos with?
There is a bit of a scientific explanation for why so many people capture orbs beside the great amount of environmental factors and other accidental things that happen like catching reflections.  It simply boils down to the technology of our cameras that we use.  This can get a little complicated so I’ll try and be simple and brief with this explanation.

There are four important components that make clear photos possible: focus, shutter speed, aperture, and the circle of confusion.  You have to focus on your object, allow the right amount of light through the aperture, use the shutter speed to limit the amount of time that light is allowed to be exposed to the film.  When these things happen the Depth of Field is created which is the amount of the image area is in focus according to the human eye.  Everything outside of the Depth of Field creates a circle of confusion.  This is basically where the light waves are confused and create blurry images at the sides and backgrounds of the things that were in focus at the time.

This is where the issue of traditional 35mm cameras and digital cameras become a factor.  With 35mm you can adjust the aperture and shutter speeds manually to take into consideration the different conditions that you might be in at the time.  While some digital cameras, like SLR cameras, will allow you to do this, the more common point and shoot digital camera does this automatically.  Digital cameras also have various auto focus features that use infrared light, which even when the flash isn’t being used, still is often triggered.  This will easily catch things that we might otherwise not think of or notice before taking a picture.

So, what this all boils down to in a nut shell is that if you’re using a point and shoot digital camera you’re much more likely to catch unwanted anomalies in our photos.    But, never fear, you can still use them but there is just a lot more work involved in verifying your orbs.  And we’ll get to that shortly.

What types of orbs are there?
There are a good number of answers to “what is that orb?”  There are about 7 different types of common orbs but I’m going to just address the most common; dust (also sometimes called Close Proximity Orbs), raindrops, colored orbs, and moving orbs.

Dust or Close Proximity Orbs
These are really the most common orbs that we see in photos of orbs, even when we thing there was no dust around to interfere in our photos.  These orbs are captured with an object is very close to the lens and results in an out of focus, often transparent looking, orb of light.  When you blow these orb images up you will often notice what is called a nucleus effect, something that is also referred to as “noise”.  This is when the center appears to be solid and then the edges look either feathered out or as if there are multiple rings within the orb itself.  Dust orbs can also be colored or appear to have auras in them, though this is more common with moisture related orbs.  In a dust situation these are actually reflections of colors from the walls or other objects nearby.

Raindrops
It almost goes without saying that if it’s raining outside and you’re doing any sort of investigation work it’s best to hold off on trying to capture things on film, be it still photos or video, until the weather has cleared up completely. This means waiting for another time altogether to do the work because even an hour or two after a rainfall there will still be plenty of moisture in the air and other things like dust and dirt floating around that will get in your way.  Rain and moisture orbs are often very bright because they reflect and light in the area including light from a camera flash, your focusing or tracking devises on your camera, or any other nearby light source.  When moisture is caught in motion it can take on what is sometimes called “the angel effect” where it looks like an angel or other being is floating up into the sky.  This upward appearance happens because the image first captures the particle in one position making it appear more solid and as it drops down the photo is being completed so only a trail of light is captured.

Moisture related orbs also are commonly seen with the aura or color effect because they capture and reflect surrounding light and color waves easily.  These are also the ones that are get the “face effect”. You may notice in some of your pictures that you can almost make out a face in the orb.  These are almost always the ones that people insist are the spirits of a loved one.  The fact of the mater is that this is an effect captured by the camera showing crystallization of the water within a moisture or rain orb.  Even though it may not be cold or be the winter season, moisture and water drops go through a crystallization process in their path to the earth and this is what we’re seeing.  The lines that are created in the crystallization process can sometimes give the appearance of a face (and honestly the fact that this is what we are often looking for is part of what it’s what we see).

Colored Orbs
Colored orbs can be a result of moisture or dust.  They occur as a result of unique light wave patterns of that particular object.  This is an effect called “chromatic aberration” and is a result of the camera lens not being able to focus on a single point of light when the photo was taken so various different light waves are picked up at the same time.

Moving Orbs
Again this is a result of air flow, winds, and simple light breeze.  Even in a room where all seems still there is a path of air flow. There is a phenomenon called “intelligent flight path” that is often captured on film and is through to be a determining factor in finding “true orbs”.  The problem is that it’s hard to know in the examination of the evidence what the air patterns might have been light if they weren’t noted ahead of time.  These videos, and sometimes photos, might show something like an orb flying quickly from one spot to another and then right back to where it originated from, or appearing to move from one person to another who are in the frame of the shot.  Again, it’s hard to ever truly determine these so they are often left as an undecided piece of evidence in an investigation. 

What can I do to ensure I’m going to capture true orbs in my photos?
Catching a true orb is not easy but there are some steps that you can take to help you know eliminate some of those false positives.

1. Be sure that when you start taking photos that you write down in a journal the date, time, location, and conditions of when the photos were taken.  If you’re using a camera with time stamping you can use that but most photos now have that information stored as part of the file.  You want to make sure that you have some record of what the conditions were like when you took those pictures later.  A photo that you might feel is a spirit may have been taken when you clearly marked down that the room seemed damp to you, for example.
2. Don’t use your flash.  Using your flash is the first way to guarantee that you’ll pick up false positive orbs in just about every possible fashion.  If you’re working with other people who are taking photos at the same time be sure to either ask them to turn off their flash as well, or better yet, take your pictures in turns.  Call out that you’re going to start photographing and ask the others on your team to hold off on taking any more of their own until you are done.  Even the infrared tracking from someone else’s camera can cause a false positive in your own photos.
3. Work alone.  When you’re working in teams and you’re trying to capture orbs having just one person in the group taking those photos eliminates a number of interfering factors.  First you eliminate the possibility for catching a reflection from another person’s camera.  Second you eliminate someone else kicking up dust or dirt or even doing something as innocent as sneezing next to you right when you took a photo which I can tell you from first hand experience can create some really amazing false positives with orbs!
4. Record EVPs.  This helps to create a source of corroborating evidence which is the key to all paranormal investigation.  You need more than one result of something to tip the scales in favor of spirit activity.  If you have a recording of an EVP from a session while you were taking photos and you capture a sound that is determined to be related to location history at the same time you caught an orb (again, time stamping is important), you’ll have some more to back up your claim of capturing something genuine.  An example of that would be investigating at a sight where a murder by gun shot happened and while calling out to the spirits you hear what sounds like the clicking of a trigger or a clear gun shot. You capture this on EVP and in a photo taken at the exact same time you also catch an orb.   While this isn’t the  determining factor it’s a major start toward possibly proving you have a true orb!
5. And remember you’re trying to capture evidence, not take pretty pictures!  So don’t worry about flash and framing and all that.  When I’m doing photos in a location I almost never even look through the lens because half the time I can’t tell what I’m looking at walking through the dark. I just keep clicking away, blindly pointing the camera around the room.  This is also how you run a better chance of both seeing an orb with the naked eye and capturing it on film.

Common Criteria for True Orbs
There are a few things that are commonly accepted as the ways to determine true orbs verses false positives.

1. The orb must clearly be generating it’s own light.  It cannot have any sort of transparency and cannot be pale in color.
2. The orb must be in focus without any blur in the photo.
3. The orb must be perfectly round.
4. The orb must be solid with no rings or nucleus. Because of the issue of matrixing (i.e. seeing patterns in random imaging where none truly exist; sort of like looking for shapes in clouds or seeing the “man in the moon”) things like faces being visible are not considered valid.  However there are investigators that say the nucleus effect actually is the determining factor in an orb being spirit generated but the fact that this is common among dust, dirt, and some light moisture orbs makes it really impossibly to differentiate.
5. The orb must have intelligent movement captured on video and in a place where drafts and obvious airflow interference are not a factor.
6. The orb must have corroborating evidence such as an EVP, high EMF readings, measured temperature readings, or video evidence.
7. The orb should have been visible to the naked eye before the photo was taken and it should ideally have been visible by two different team members.

One thing that I loved when I trained for my CPI was that we were taught to always hold our evidence to the theory of Occam’s Razor:

In the absence of full information, the simplest explanation is likely the correct one.

And in my experience with the paranormal this is extremely true.

There is a grading system that’s used for determining the level of probability that an orb is true or not, however, because this post has become so massive, I’ll save that for the next post in a few days.  I’ll also share some of my own orb photos and give you some photos that you can test your understanding of orbs with.  That post should be fun.  🙂

Until then pull out your orb photos and see how they hold up to this information.  Do you have anything that you think is a true orb?