What is that blue dot?

[Isabelle MacDonald]

I was taking pictures tonight and found a silly blue dot on every moon shot. I tried to retouch and finally gave up and cropped it out of the pic. What causes this dot? It almost looks like a reflection of the moon with my lense ending up on the pic.

[Isabelle MacDonald]

oh and how do you correct or avoid it?

[Nod]

Probably lens or filter flair

[karen*♥]

@roadrunner Do you use a lens hood? If not that may help avoid it, Also some photo editing may eliminate it.

[Jason Daniels]

@roadrunner - what f-stop where you using? A f-stop up around f22 may show up dust on your sensor or a spot on your lens. Not often seen in dark imagery but it maybe what you are seeing in your shot?

[Carolyn White]

Is it possible that you were getting Sirius, the Dog Star, in your shot?

[Lord Shadow]

Nope, sorry to say it was more than likely a hot pixel.

Hot pixels happen when the tiny pixels of your camera sensor overload or go out altogether. Most of the time, this is a temporary problem. It often happens when shooting long exposures or scenes during night because the sensor is taxed most during these times.

Try shooting a photo of a sheet of white printer paper tomorrow using the sunlight. Don't let it overexpose. See if you still have that same blue dot.

[Karen]

@roadrunner Do you have a UV or clear filter on your lens? It might be a reflection from the filter, causing a 'ghost' image.

[Dawn B]

I get this, its reflection - a lens hood helps me

[Nod]

@roadrunner @jasonbarnette Come to think of it, I had it last week when I shoot at night too using a Canon. A few photos had it.

[Jason Daniels]

@jasonbarnette - does pixel mapping solve this?

[Isabelle MacDonald]

@karenr I use a lense hood only during the day on very sunny days. I'm using Picnik for editing, tried and tried some more, didn't work.
@bobfoto I was shooting in aperture priority mode at 5.6f and 6secs exposure, I have a Nikon
@jasonbarnette somehow this make a lot of sense. It was like the dot kept popping at various location all depending on the angle of the camera.
@pengu1n Yes there is a UV filter on, always... it's on in order to protect my lense.
@thineownself Is a hood for night shooting as well?
@viranod Yeah I think Jason is right...

Off to shoot a white piece of paper, Thanks guys :o)

[karen*♥]

@roadrunner Post how the white paper turned out. ")

[Dawn B]

@roadrunner I have to use a hood where I live because of all the streetlights ;)

[Isabelle MacDonald]

@jasonbarnette @karenr Grrr it won't work, I gotta put something with it in order to fire a shot :o\

[Jason Daniels]

@roadrunner - try focussing on the table first, half-press the trigger, get the focus, then slip in the white piece of paper, and depress trigger all the way. But that won't get your white balance, but it will get a shot of the piece of paper???