LParis Loc: Victoria, BC Canada

hi
I just acquired a Canon SX50 (mostly for its raw photo ability) and have been using it in Program Mode. I have always used my cameras in Auto Mode before, so I have limited knowledge of how to set up the other modes - I wanted to tackle one mode at a time.
2 days ago when out shooting some of my photos (both RAW and Jpeg taken at the same time) had a white dot in the sky. it was not consistent (in other words, it didn't appear consecutively but intermittently).
At first I thought maybe my lens was dirty but that doesn't explain why it didn't appear in all photos.
I am shooting in P mode and using setting suggested by a forum member (Linda from Maine) which I needed after my first few days of shots were disastrous; I was getting shots at 5000 ISO at very low speeds. I read the rules for this forum and it said to provide info on my camera, so here goes:

servo af - off
ISO auto settings - set to max ISO 1600
rate of change - standard
Auto white balance
centre weighted average (metering)
4:3 aspect ratio
raw+jpeg
Large file size (4000x3000)
AF- flexizone
digital zoom off
continuous AAF on
Hight ISO AR - standard
Spot AE point - centre

I am attaching a photo here which shows "the dot", it was in pretty much the same place each time and was on both the CR and jpeg.

It was a very sunny day but I was NOT shooting into the sun.

My camera settings for this photo were ISO 80, F 4.5 1/1000

obviously this was an easy fix in Photoshop Elements 13 but I'd really like to know the cause!!

thanks for any suggestions.

ISO 80, F 4.5 1/1000

(Download)

photosbytw Loc: Blue Ridge Mountains

If you magnify your image you'll see a lot more "spots".
My first guess would be moisture.

Are you using a microfibre cloth?

LParis Loc: Victoria, BC Canada

thanks - I just magnified it now and see what you mean. I do remember thinking I'd seen some other smudges when I edited but was just doing a quick edit and didn't magnify them as I worked. It was not a damp day at all -- also I did not wipe the lens between shots so I'm still not sure why it would show up on a couple of photos and not the next few, then again reappear --- when it did, it was always in the blue sky.

and yes I have a microfibre cloth but didn't use it until we got home.

thanks for responding.

Yesterday, same kind of weather - same general area of town taking shots - no spots.

flyguy Loc: Las Cruces, New Mexico

The dots are more than likely dirt on your sensor and there are cleaning kits and instruction vids online --- much has been written about it here on UHH or use Google to find out about it.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

If you're using the wide angle end of the lens, you could be getting sun-related spots although not shooting directly into the sun. My ultra wide angle has a rather bulbous from lens element that is shielded by a flower-shaped hood but I can still get spots in the photo when the sun is to my side by 45 degrees or more. If the sun can get to your front element even at a long angle, it will enhance any dust particles or moisture spots on the front element even if the moisture has dried and just left a little residue.

While some people don't like the idea, I clean the front of my lens with a cotton ball which doesn't leave lint. A pure virgin new cotton ball squeezed between my first two fingers does a really good job of getting everything and leaving nothing. I've got microfiber cloths too but I'm not in love with them. Sometimes I'll microfiber first, then cotton ball second.

In any case, it's not the camera but sun-related and glass surface related.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Looking at the spots magnified I think this is a logical explanation - does not look particularly like sensor spots, but spots from the lens or reflections thru a UV filter.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

That appears to be a reflection... flare. If you look at it larger, you'll see several other, fainter but larger "ghosts", along with the smaller, brighter one. All of these are six-sided (hexagonal), i.e. the shape of the lens aperture.

Do you have a filter on the lens? If so, try without it.

Are you able to use a hood to shade the lens on that camera?

Here's an example of a very similar flare effect in one of my lenses, without it's matched lens hood on the left. Second image on the right shows how simply adding the lens hood can prevent this type of flare. In both these image, the sun was almost directly overhead and well out of the image area (the clouds moved a little between the shots).



Flare can be caused or increased by something on the front of the lens. A filter might amplify it. Moisture on the lens... drops of water from the surf, might refract oblique light and cause flare too.

But most of the time, dust or other things on the front of the lens don't cause flare or even show up in images at all. They just reduce resolution and may increase flare... Unless it's something really large on the front lens element!

Since it only appears in some images, that further leads me to believe that it's some sort of flare effect. You should be able to see this type of flare occurring in the viewfinder and might be able to reduce or avoid it by changing the aperture size and/or just slightly moving and reframing the subject.

Here's an example where I shot directly into the sun, causing a lot of flare effects in the lefthand image. I could see it happening in my camera's viewfinder. Moving and reframing just slightly, I was able to greatly reduce the flare effects for the righthand image.


Both lenses in my examples above (Canon EF-S 10-22mm for the cloud shots, and EF 24-70/2.8L for the equestrian arena shots) are highly resistant to flare... But I was able to cause it to occur, and largely able to correct for it in a couple of extreme situations.

It's a common problem with interchangeable lens SLRs and DSLRs, but - no - dust on the rear lens element or the sensor itself is almost impossible with a fixed-lens camera such yours. Even then, dust on those places doesn't look like what I see in your images... wouldn't be in the shape of the lens' aperture, and wouldn't have multiple "ghosts" of the same shape but different sizes and brightness.

By the way, something unrelated...

I notice you are using Spot Metered Auto Exposure (AE). That's usually used for backlit subjects or other tricky light situations. Evaluative Metering or Center Weighted Metering is more typically used for shots like your example.

Also, P or Program Mode is still a very highly automated mode, in which the only exposure decision you make is to set the ISO (and some cameras also have Auto ISO, which if it were enabled along with P would make it sort of an Auto-Auto mode).

The "Scene" modes ("running man"/sports, "mountain"/scenic, etc.) are Super Auto modes. They not only automate exposure, they also dictate other things such as type of image file saved, method of focus, whether the flash should be used or not, etc.

The "Green Box" (on some Canon models) or "A+" (on other Canon models) mode is a similarly highly automated mode.

Canon calls them the "Creative" modes: Av, Tv, P and M. These put the user more in charge of what the camera is doing, leave it more up to the photographer to decide how they want the image to look. Av, Tv and P are still auto exposure, though. Differences are that Av (aperture priority) allows the user to choose a larger aperture for shallow depth of field/strong background blur effect, or a smaller aperture for deep DoF, sharpness from near to far, while the camera is still allowed to automatically select a shutter speed that will give the correct exposure (user needs to watch that it doesn't fall too low or go higher than they wanted, adjust ISO if needed). Tv (shutter priority) puts the user in charge of the shutter speed to make it slow for deliberate motion blur, or fast to freeze action completely and the camera will automatically choose an aperture that will give the correct exposure (user needs to watch that aperture isn't giving too little or too much depth of field, adjust ISO accordingly).

P or Program - such as you are using - adjusts both aperture and shutter speed automatically, really isn't much different from using the Green Box/A+ mode.

Since you appear to be interested in learning more about it.... check if your camera has "CA" mode. This setting can be a helpful tool providing sort of an exposure wizard on the camera's LCD screen, that walks you through making the various settings by asking you what you are trying to do in each image. It can be a shortcut learning what the various settings will do. Not all Canon models have "CA", though.

You also might want to get a copy of Bryan Peterson's "Understanding Exposure". Not specific to Canon or your particular camera, but it's a great book to learn the basics of photography. It's primarily written with interchangeable lens SLRs/DSLRs in mind... however the principles it teaches and many of the methods of controlling the camera are pretty universal. I highly recommend it to anyone ready to move beyond highly automated "point n shoot" mode! (http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Exposure-3rd-Photographs-Camera/dp/0817439390/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429378449&sr=1-1)

GTinSoCal Loc: Palmdale, CA

It does in fact, appear to lens flare, it is pointing right towards the sun.

GT

LParis Loc: Victoria, BC Canada

thanks, Marcos, glad to know it's not my camera or settings that are the issue. I will try your cotton ball method! cheers, Lynne

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

NEVER EVER use common cotton balls or swabs around your camera. They shed tough, cotton fibers that get caught in places you don't want them. This is one of the first big DON'Ts that they teach professional camera repair techs.

Front element of a lens isn't too risky, but I've seen stuff wedged under the edges of lenses that's difficult to remove. You especially want to avoid cotton balls and swabs inside cameras, where it can cause expensive repair jobs for jammed shutters and more.

There are special cleaning swabs made for optics. Those and microfiber cloths are much safer to use. Heck, your t-shirt is safer to use! Start with a bulb blower to remove any particles that might be grit that can scratch the lens. Then gently use the swab or cloth, a drop or two of lens cleaning fluid lightly dampening it can help with adhered particles and oily fingerprints. Then, polish lightly with a "lens pen" for the finishing touch (removes any light haze left by the cleaning fluid).

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Nice shot and exposed the way I would like it if it was mine. My only comment would be that I would have typically used a much smaller aperture (larger number) for a static scenic like this where there isn't much if any movement going on. I would have chosen f/11 and that would have reduced your shutter speed considerably, maybe down to around 1/250.

My method for daytime outdoors is to try to have a shutter speed in the range of 1/125 to 1/500 and set my aperture as small as possible. Depth of field is then virtually unlimited from within a few inches of your camera out to infinity. That didn't matter in your photo but if there would have been a sign or plaque describing what you were seeing, or another object of interest very near you as you shot, it may have been out of focus. That object being clear and crisp may have been preferable to you.

I don't typically use Auto ISO but manually choose an ISO for the type of shooting I'm doing. I simply don't like ISO roaming around doing what it wants to. I would choose ISO 200 or less in this application (as your camera did, fortunately) and then there are only two factors - shutter and aperture - involved in the exposure instead of three. In not very bright late afternoon or early morning daylight I would likely move up to ISO 400. There are exceptions, of course, where you would try for a much higher shutter speed like 1/1000 or more to capture action. It's my opinion that taking control of ISO is important so you only need to think about shutter and aperture while shooting.

My wife had a little Canon Point & Shoot that was Auto everything because she doesn't want to know how it does what it does. She just likes to shoot and print or Facebook-post and that's all. She hated that Canon because it never gave her what she expected and all dusk or darker shots were blurred even with flash - which most times was inadequate too.

So I got her a little Panasonic (she had a Panasonic before very successfully until our baby dropped it lens down on the floor and the zoom got messed up) and the new Panasonic went about doing what it does very differently (although it was also a little cheaper than the Canon). It is almost impossible to get a bad exposure or blur with it and she still has it although she's shifted to her 8MP cell phone lately because it posts to Facebook immediately.

One day I took the little unused Canon with me in my back pocket to a playground with our child for something to do. I decided to look through the menus to see if I could get it to work better. There wasn't much to change but I saw that I could shut off Auto ISO and set what I wanted. So I picked ISO400. Immediately shutter speed was forced to be faster and aperture tightened up too apparently. I could shoot the kids running with no action blur, everything was crisp and never fuzzy with excellent focus, and the camera became a whole different animal. It was still noisy in dark situations but at least it was working really nice for a daytime pocket camera.

So consider taking manual control of your ISO while still keeping the ISO 1600 maximum limit.

Remember, small aperture number (larger hole like f/4.5) means shallower depth of field (the area that is sharp in focus) and more light into the sensor - larger aperture number (smaller hole like f/11) means much deeper depth of field but less light into the sensor. Faster shutter speed like 1/1000th means ability to capture action without blur but less light gets into the camera in that amount of time. Slow shutter speed like 1/30th can capture blurred action intentionally such as causing waterfall water to blur into a creamy smooth surface and also allows more time for light to get into the camera. Lowlight shots like nightscapes require very a very large aperture hole and very slow speed to get enough light into the camera.

Proper exposure is a juggling act between shutter and aperture for the type of shot you're going to take - but only if you take Auto ISO out of the picture by locking it down so it can't roam. When it moves to wherever it wants to go without your control, your shutter and aperture settings are also varied to numbers you don't have complete control of. So you are a slave to ISO until you lock it down and then it becomes a slave to you instead - even when you shoot in auto everything else mode.

You didn't do anything wrong with your shot. I'm just adding some details to help you in the future.

photosbytw Loc: Blue Ridge Mountains

Any time I get dirt/dust on my sensor it was dark, not a white circle. As for lens flare.............I'm not so sure......I've never seen flare act quite like this........yet again, I'm so not set in my ways to say it's not......................I'm still betting on moisture tho......

:-P

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Well... I've been using cotton balls with no residue on both front and rear lens elements for years so I have to disagree, although I also wouldn't put a cotton ball inside the camera. When using dry microfiber on my glass I find that the glass becomes electrically charged and draws dust to the glass quicker. When I use a cotton ball dust may stay gone for a week or more of every day use.

By the way, a T-shirt is not safer nor preferable because it has caustic soap residue in the material from being washed in a machine. And if it was dried with liquid softener or softener papers in the dryer, the softener leaves a minor oily residue in the material that transfers to the lens. I never use shirt material unless it's an emergency.

To each his own.

LParis Loc: Victoria, BC Canada

Would you think that there would be dirt on the sensor when I have only owned the camera for 2 weeks and it was new, out of the box when I got it? Also they never showed up in the previous days' photos and haven't shown up since.

LParis Loc: Victoria, BC Canada

thanks guys, but no filter on the camera at all - I was told to remove it until I know what I'm doing.
thanks for replying.