Loading ...Good questions… ones I also asked myself. Yes… it is possible for the cloud image overlay to ‘modulate’ the streak as it is shifted off. For the reflections on the water… think of the water as a mirror. It sees the lightning flash also, and the water pool image also overloads the sensor. In the case of the puddles in the foreground, there is just enough light to make the sensor streak ‘fuzzy’ but not a solid streak to the edge of the plate… so you can make out the dark ground around the puddle. That one is a bit different, but there are many complexities to the optical and electrical microstructure of the sensor plate.. many variations… that can cause responses like this.
In TV cameras for field use, they go to great pains to eliminate this streaking effect in the design of the CMOS sensor plate. They are expensive, and will still streak if you catch the sun with too wide an exposure. The personal still cameras for consumer use use cheap CMOS designs that work OK under “Normal” conditions, but no attempt is made to supress these out-of-bounds bright spots. They are all a bit different, depending on chip design.