White Spots in Flash Photos

[SLR10]

I just got a 5 Megapixel Powershot S50 and took some photos in a project I take photos in often. I noticed some white spots in the photos I took with tthe flash and some are so bad you can hardly see the picture. While the manual says this is a normal phenomenon with digital cameras, particularally in wide angle format, I have never gotten these dots before with the Nikon 4 MP camera I was using before or the Kodak 1 MP camera. I noticed some in a few photos my mother took with her S30 too.

Is this an issue (or more of one) with Canon Powershots and is there an adjustment that can be made to the settings?

[Conk]

This is an issue that has been posted in the past. I too have had the same problem. I still have never heard of a fix or even the cause.

[SLR10]

The manual says it is flash reflection from dust or bugs. What concerns me is that this didn't happen with the other camras I used ounder simular conditions.

[PeterS45]

My daughter uses a Nikon Coolpix 2500 and she can hardly ever use the flash because of those white spots. With my S45 I've just a few flash pictures with white spots on them. But the fact that it might be dust makes sense to me, because she takes a lot of flash pictures at her dance academy while people are dancing (so there's a lot of movement that causes dust in the air) and my flash pictures are mostly taken at home. So I think my wife uses the vacuum cleaner a lot ;-)))

[stduc]

This problem has two basic causes and 2 partial solutions.

The basic causes are the flash is too near the lens and the lens focal length is too short. This means that particles in front of the lense is 'in focus' and that light from the flash catches this dust and bounces straight back into the lens.

The only real solutions therefore are SLR type camera's and external flash units. (and this goes for re-eye problems as well)

So, what can you do if you have a powershot or similar camera? well, you can minimise the problem by using a bit of zoom and keeping the aperture as wide as possible. The idea being to get whatever it is that is catching the flash near the camera out of focus. trouble is the more zoom you use the worse the red eye problem. You can't win! So if you have an A70m try aperture priority and set the aperture to 2.8

Don't forget to keep the lense as clean as possible. I use an air brush.

[Guillermo Freige]

I have a S50 and so far never get the "noise effect" in flash pictures, but I've only shooted a couple of times, indoor, in a clean room.

[Pewterpez]

I'm with guillermo, could someone possibly post a photo of this odd phenomenon?

[PeterS45]

Take a look at this one http://home.planet.nl/~bout0140/img/109_0990.JPG. You can see the white round spots very clearly.

[Pewterpez]

are you sure that's dust? it's seems odd that dust would form perfectly round circles that'd bounce back light...if anything, those circles look more like lens flares from the lights (????)

[PeterS45]

Take a look at this link http://www.fujifilmsupport.com/faq/tech/spot/spot.htm, were Fujifilm explains what the white spots are.

[SLR10]

How did you paste that picture in? You won't believe the photo I have that started this whole thing.

[PeterS45]

Just put the picture somewhere on the internet and when you reply to this message click on Help for the instructions on how to embed an image


I also have pictures much worse than the one I posted, but this was a picture I made the same day so it was the easiest to find.

[Pewterpez]

haha

now I see, thanks for the fujifilm link

so those big dots are actually dust that's so close to the lens and being out of focus makes it huge...


but the fuji film link gave me a good idea to minimize it, if the subjects are still for a second shot and you're on a tripod, so you'll get an identical shot, to put both photos as layers in a document and then set the top layer to some setting, I can't remember the exact one, whether it's overlay or difference or what, but play around with it until it removes the issue... (basically replicating a noise-removal procedure)