Yup

That is just drops of water on your lense

The sun directly in the middle of the pictures can effect flares as well. Just use a faster shutterspeed and a higher f/ number then put the exposure compensation to +1 or if necessary +2.

If the dust is highly visable on normal pictures with just that lens, then its worth taking it to a specilist to get it cleaned.

I couldn't' send my lenses away. They were fixing my camera, not the lenses, and only asked for my camera body . Oh and btw, I only had like one lens on my camera, so it wasn't just switching lenses that got my sensor dirty. I think it was dirty when I first got it. And I think you should be able to switch lenses without having to worry about massive dust particles getting inside.

and that flare you're talking about, I'm sure it's just from the sun. lol. Try to get that dust to show in a clear blue sky and see if it's there. Not with the sun shining in your lens.

This post was edited by chantal7 on Feb 3 2009 11:57am

It's just flare... Don't take pictures into the sun!

imo big dust particles look like that since they get so much light on them, but on front element dust doesent show nearly at all

Hmm... yeah it's hard to tell. It really does look like a flare to me though?!

I'm pretty sure its just flare. Whether or not it appears depends solely on the angle of incidence so showing a shot from the past with the camera pointed at a bright light source doesn't really help unless you're reproducing the same angle.

I can't seem to dig up the link but there was an experiment done by a lens rental company a while back with a lens that had a cracked front element. While the pictures it took weren't as sharp, it could still manage reasonably good pictures in most lighting conditions. You would be surprised how much a lens can take before image quality starts to suffer.

Just to note. While you aren't using the dust-loving 17-55 f/2.8 IS, you can search for some of the guides people have made about opening up a lens. A lot of people did it themselves to avoid the cost and the time for shipping/repair. Hopefully you have a good quality UV filter on because some Canon lenses pull in dust through the front zoom function.

I guess they aren't as nice as I thought lol. So the dust on your sensor could have been created inside the camera course i have heard that dust could be created inside the camera by all those moving parts or could get inside it because the body isn't sealed. Oh and you can buy some kind of sensor cleaning kit and I have heard that it's not hard to clean the sensor either and I am sure you are handy and careful enough to do that . I actually went to Don's earlier today and asked them if they could clean the lens for me and they told me that they would send it away to a repair shop and it would cost me 100+ dollars!!! So I guess I'll just have live with that huge and very visible dust particle.



hmm well maybe you guys are right but it's just weird that I almost never had any problems with flare before even though I had taken quite a few pictures of the sun with the very same lens on my first EOS 40D... I guess I will have to check the rear part of the lens too to see if there's dust there too and I actually bought a lens cleaning pen earlier so I am going to check if it works



That sounds interesting, really. I never knew that even a crack in the front element wouldn't really affect image quality. Well the people at my local camera store told me that some of those EFS lenses do get whole a lot of dust inside them and it is really surprising that the very expensive EFS 17-55 IS USM lens are just as crappy, stupid Canon lol. I guess if I ever going to buy a replacement for my 17-85 it will be one of those L lenses because of they are weather sealed. Oh and they also told me that I really shouldn't try to open the lens and try to clean myself course chances are that I will either get even more dust in it or simply break it lmao. but thanks for the info though. I think my UV filter is good enough it's a Hoya HMC Super (0) something

This post was edited by Futurama on Feb 3 2009 07:07pm