I recently got an Olympus D220L. Today I took a number of flash pictures, and noticed unisightly light circles on some of them, located apparently randomly in the frame. The don't seem associated with any specular highlight on the subject. I carefully checked the lens and see no trace of dust.

Is this a compression artifact? Is there anything that can be done about it?

Jay

-- Jay Holovacs (holovacs@idt.net), January 23, 1999

Answers

Hmm.. Hard to figure what they might be without seeing them. If you'd like to email a direct-from-camera JPEG to me, I'd be happy to see iof I can figure out what they might be... It could be lens flare of some sort, which could be the result of a specular reflection, but wouldn't be directly associated with it in the image. Shoot me a shot, I'll see if they look familiar.

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), January 24, 1999.

I had exactly the same experience the first day out with my new CP900. I was shooting in a large factory building and got small round light circles at random on the image. It turned out to be the very high overhead lights in the building. Adding a juryrigged lens hood solved the problem for me.

-- Bob Benson (benson@gbasin.net), January 25, 1999.