red spots from sun? pic included

I recently took a photo of a sunset over the water and there are red dots in almost

all of my pictures.

 

For example...

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=29mqan7&s=3

 

Is there any way that I can fix this for future pictures? Or a way that I can edit it

out with photoshop programs? I have a standard digital camera.. nothing special.

 

any help would be appreciated!

The red "dots" are the result of internal reflections of the very bright sun on the sensor and/or lens surfaces. There's very little you could do to prevent it (short of replacing the camera). Some cameras and lenses are very susceptible to this, some less so. If you are going to be doing a lot of sunsets, then checking various reviews on different forums regarding the cameras or lenses you'd like to use may point out those with the most or least noticeable flare issues.

Heather, the red spots are a type of lens flare, in this case caused by internal reflections from the lens internal surfaces as said above. The other variety of lens flare ithat is often seen is the scattering of light across an image which causes a lowering of contrast.

 

There is not much you can do when the light source is in the image as in your pic. The best thing is to use a wider than necessary lens and put the sun right in the middle then crop to get your composition. Having the light source right in the middle of the image reduces flare.

 

Other things to reduce flare are - use a lens hood and keep the lens surfaces clean though neither would help in this case.

 

The best way to treat this in pjotoshop is to copy and paste from a nearby piece of water and adjust it to merge in as I have quickly and imperfectly done in the example.<div></div>

I'll bet that you had a filter on the lens that gave you the ghost image to the lower right of the sun. This is one application where a filter should not be used, (except possibly a neutral grad.)

Hello Heather, Sometimes just tilting the camera a few degrees up or down left or right wil get rid of your problem, You will need to observe this whilst looking through the viewfinder.

<p>I experienced the same issue todays ago, after taking pictures in bright sunlight. Using a lens hood could help though it could disappointing results in landscape photographs. Best alternative would be to use the exposure and recover tools in Photoshop CS5. Or better still use Darktable, though it is purely Linux based system.</p>

<p>I experienced the same issue two days ago, after taking pictures in bright sunlight. Using a lens hood could help though it could yield disappointing results in landscape photographs. Best alternative would be to use the exposure and recover tools in Photoshop CS5. Or better still use Darktable is open source and gives better results. It is though Linux based system and does not have a Windows option. </p>

<p>I find I have fairly good luck taking sunset photos if I use a UV filter. Sometimes I get the red spots but more often I don't or they're very minimal.</p>