Ok Im going to try to be as thorough as possable, but pardon me if i leave details out i am somewhat new to digital, and this forum.
Recently I have been having a problem with spots showing up on my pictures. I shot a friends band the other day and in many of the shots these spots are showing up. I have had dust spots in pictures in the past, but i don't think it really looks ike dust, some of them are very large, and very inconsistant. I was using a canon 10d, with a sigma 14mm lense, and an old Nikon flash that was my fathers (works fine, and gets me by till i can afford a new flash). I am not very experience with flash photography as my photo teacher was not very fond of it and therefore didn't really teach us anything about it. I have had the lense for a few months and this has NEVER happened. It is also very clean and i have taken very good care of it. I didn't think it could be dirt on the lense though becuase I think i would focus out. Worst comes to worst, both my camera and the lense are still under warrenty so i suppose in the end it will be fine, i am just pretty distraught about it right now. Also i have done a test for dust, and there is some dust on my sensor but it done not seem to be consistant with the spots on the pictures, and is not so bad. I also considered the fact that this lense is pretty susceptable to lense flare, but it didn't look like that either. Any help is fully appreciated, im sure you can understand how much this is bothering me. THANKS!

put up an example on my deviantart page, the first one is a full version, and the second is a 100% crop.
Thanks!
http://www.deviantart.com/view/12717560/

http://www.deviantart.com/view/12717672/



Edited by markuss565 on Nov 29, 2004 at 01:07 AM GMT (Reason: added pictures)

You say the lens was clean, but just as a point of interest, with really short focal lengths, stuff on the front element ruins pictures. I found this with the Sigma 12-24. I was taking pictures in light rain, trying to hold an umbrella over the camera while I took pictures. I got the odd tiny spec of rain on the front, and thought it wouldn't matter. In fact those pictures had huge spots in them from the rain, I couldn't believe how badly it affected them. Fortunately I noticed it on the review screen after a few shots, and cleaned the front element. The shots after that were fine, so it was definitely the tiny specs of rain on the front element that caused the problem.

Also, when using flash, I've seen spots where the flash has reflected off dust particles in the air. Might there have been a bit of dust in the air where you were taking pictures of the band?

Steve

Thanks yea that is a valid point and i suppose you could be right. The other thing that i forgot to mention, i photographed this band 2 nights in a row at two different places with two completely different lighting situations, and the spots are present in both shoots. I even cleaned off the lense as best i could after seeing the spots from the first days shoot and they seen to be just as bad. I have noticed little imperfections on the front element but think it is common and it never showed up at all so i didn't think anything of it.
thanks!
also i did notice how the flash catches pieces of dust in the air but this spots are nothing like that.

Put on another lens. Shoot the blue sky or a white door at F16. If you see spots, than dust is more than likely part of all of the problem.