white spots on digital images

I just bought a slightly used Fujifilm A201 Digital Camera, and I am

noticing small transparent white spots on the images(at approx the

same place), noticable when taking darker pictures(like indoors) and

using the flash. I have cleaned the small lens as best I can, but

am still having this problem. At first I thought it was related to

the flash, or exposure, but because they appear in approximately the

same place, I keep thinking it has to do with the lens. Any

thoughts on what it could be, and how to fix it.

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It has the look of dust that happens to be in front of the lens

that gets illuminated by the flash. Because it's so close to the

flash it will be very bright and because it's close to the lens

it will be out of focus and produce a circle.

 

If it happens regularly it's hard to understand how, unless you have

a very dusty house.

 

Greg

Definitely dust. And digital cameras for some odd reason seem to be more sensitive to it. Don't know why.

 

I have an Olympus D-560 and a Canon A60. The A60 is worse than the Oly. Recently I was out at a Renaissance Festival (basically a street fair in the woods) and towards dusk all my pix looked as if they'd been taken in a snow storm.

 

As for the spot appearing in the same general area, it may be the geometry of the flash, lens, and sensor whereby only dust in a small area gets recorded.

 

And I don't think it means you have a dusty house. I think these cameras are just super sensitive.

Fuji's website has a web page devoted to this:<p>

<a href="http://home.fujifilm.com/products/digital/shooting/flash.html">http://home.fujifilm.com/products/digital/shooting/flash.html</a>

Well, that pretty much confirms what I said, but it doesn't explain why digicams seem more susceptible. Could it be that digicams, by and large, are smaller than even the smallest film cameras? Fuji does say size matters, or at least proximity between lens and flash. And yet I've owned some very small film cameras that never had this problem.

 

Also, as I stated, the A60 has more of a problem than the Oly. Could it be the A60's focus assist lamp is fooling the camera into focusing on nearby dust, thereby compounding the problem?

 

Bottom line seems to be that you can only do flash photography in a dust-free environment. Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, but for me this is a major defect. And for Fuji to have a page devoted to the problem tells me I'm not alone. Yet they just kind of shrug it off. Oops! Flash too close to lens, very sorry.

Just checked Canon's site and they suggest that if your camera has a zoom to use wide-angle. Supposed to help.

It would be nice to see a side-by-side comparison of a digital like the A60 and a film point-and-shoot with a similar distance between flash and lens.