Sun trouble- help

I took a friend of mines family pictures yesterday and several of them have sun beams in front of them. Others have like a haze. It was very bright so I had them put there back to the sun because they squinted otherwise. Not the best conditions but the only time they could do it. Why did this happen and what do I do to prevent it. Here is an example.

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That is known as flare. Sometimes a hood might help but usually you have to just not shoot towards the sun. Haze can often be eliminated with either a filter or a little local contrast USM.

What is local contrast USM?

hopkins wrote in post #2256296
What is local contrast USM?

It's a technique used with Photoshop; I'm sure you can do the same thing in other image processing applications that are robust.

In Photoshop, the Unsharp Mask filter is used.

In the "Amount" field, I start off between 10-20 (more towards 10-15)....

In the "Radius" field, I start off around 125, and depending how much I need, I'll go into the 200's....

I'll keep the "Threshold" field at 0 most times...

Most times, this cuts the "haze" right out of the image. You can see the effect by "winking" the "Preview" check box to see the "before" and "after" effects.

As I believe it was said, try having the sun to your back when shooting.

If that's not possible, using a bit of fill flash should lessen the flare a bit.

And to completely muddy things up....sometimes you want flare

All depends on the shooting situation. As we progress, we learn when and where and even how to take advantage of situations like this.

Me? I still have nary a clue! LOL!

Tom D

txduggan- thank you for walking me through it.

Could this sort of flare be fixed by flagging the lens with your hand?