What's my lens doing?

Shot this today with the 17-55mm 2.8 IS. Is that lens flare? What would cause that? and how do I fix it? It was on several of the flower shots today.

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UV filter or closeup filter on?

Are you talking about the blue lines on the edges of the flower? That's Chromatic Aberration... It's caused by the inability of the lens to focus all colors at the same point and is most common on cheaper lenses. Higher end lenses have specially ground elements and coatings to reduce this problem.

I'm not a big expert on the optical properties of lenses and possibly someone else will chime in and help...

A bad case of CA, chromatic aberration. Some editing programs like DxO will remove it automatically.

But like the response above, we need more information as to what was hanging on the glass or what you were shooting through.

There was a UV filter on the lens. Its a cheap Tiffen. This is the first time I've ever noticed this on any of the photos I've taken with it.

It was handheld, so that could be part of the problem. Can't remember if the IS was on or not.

hrm, I didn't think that was a cheap lens?

Take the UV filter off and see if it takes a difference (it should).

That is a $1,000 lens. One lesson I learned the hard way was not to use cheap filters.

Kaigler wrote in post #8465475
That is a $1,000 lens. One lesson I learned the hard way was not to use cheap filters.

Yup, a bad filter can turn the best lens' into the worst

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Learning to focus correctly will help a lot. Of all the lenses I own, 17-55 is not one I'd grab for "macro" work.

gasrocks wrote in post #8465774
Learning to focus correctly will help a lot. Of all the lenses I own, 17-55 is not one I'd grab for "macro" work.

well, this is a crop of the overall image, but I agree with you. I'd love to have a macro lens, but it hasn't magically appeared in my bag yet.