CreeDo

How sure are you it's dirt and not something like broken-up light coming through the leaves? Because of course I thought it might be dirty and tried that first thing. I've seen lens and sensor dust ...

First thing I did a while ago (when I first noticed) was clean front and rear with Zeiss lens wipes. I think it's clean, but gave it one more shot. Was hard to see anything because the aperture ...

I know everyone assumes "this guy is just incompetent and shooting straight into the sun". I promise you I am not. If I tilted my camera upwards from this position, it probably wouldn't even be in ...

I've tried a few things, including testing other lenses, but I've concluded that there's really nothing that can be done with this particular lens, except keep changing angles until I find an ...

You're right, and I misspoke. I do know that for a lot of modern dslrs, within certain ISO ranges, it's absolutely meaningless whether you're at... say, ISO 800 vs. ISO 6400. Brightening in post ...

I vaguely follow, I think, but mostly due to having read some other responses... I feel like when you convert to math formulas, it might be super concise and technically accurate way of explaining ...

This is a VERY helpful answer, because it's super easy to understand and doesn't use jargon or assume prior knowledge. This makes a lot of sense to me. I basically asked RB why boosting isn't the ...

So I like the answer, and I feel like maybe with a little more simplifying, I might get my head around it. (aka ELI5, which means explain like I'm 5, it's a bit of slang from reddit). So, tell me ...

Note: I'm not asking for ISO advice advice like "what should I do to get less noise? what settings should I use?".. I'm past all that. This is just to improve my understanding of how ISO works. Man ...

Definitely not gonna clean any further, and my images are ok. There was a dark spot at one point, and took 2 cleanings to fix it. It was during the 2nd cleaning that I noticed the white speck. I'm ...

At some point, somehow, I got something on the sensor that didn't simply blow off. I of course prefer to just use a bulb and blow dust off and not touch it at all. But whatever I had wouldn't blow ...

nope, like a bright white speck with a sorta defined shape, almost like a single flake of silica from sand. But there doesn't seem to be any depth or 3D object there. It's like the glass itself ...

when I apply gentle pressure to the sensor cleaning swab (which is one of those squeegee things that is exactly the width of the sensor)... right after the swap passes over a certain area, I see a ...

appreciate the suggestion... I tried looking down the barrel but even wide open, it's a pretty small aperture and my eyes aren't seeing any specks. I guess if it's a tiny speck in the wrong place ...

I am coming around to the idea that this is some kind of dust issue. I originally thought that dust wouldn't show up with those lens-flare-like octagon shapes, but I finally got the idea to ...

well, that makes sense. I can't spot anything looking through the lens directly but it might be easy to overlook. I did clean it as best as I could externally (as well as the sensor). I wonder if ...

I can, not sure what the typical way of doing that is... like a text file or what? If you're mainly looking to confirm my settings aren't anything dumb or wacky, I can just show you those. Here's ...

Not saying that's wrong, but would that cause these bright spots that are clearly in the shape of the aperture blades, i.e. a clearly-defined 9-sided shape? How would that work?

Unfortunately, What you described is how I'm already shooting. I underexpose to preserve (some of) the highlights, and then lift shadows. The results are a bit better if I just expose for the ...

Appreciate the thought. I do think the big dynamic range makes a problem that looks minor in many shots (or nonexistent) and blows it up. But my work doesn't really give me time for setting up ...