Sunrise Reflection

[js402]

I am a newbie to the forums and to DSLR photography. I have an old 35mm SLR that I used years ago, but for the past 7 years, I've used P&S digital cameras. I recently purchased a Canon Rebel T3i. It came with the stock 18-55 Canon lens and I purchased a Tamron 18-200 Zoom/Macro lens separately.

I've been experimenting a bit with it and this morning I stepped outside to take a picture of a sunrise. I apparently got a reflection of the sun in my pictures. Not sure how this happened or what I can do to avoid it. This occurred with both the 18-55 and the 18-200. The 18-200 has a lens hood and the reflection remained even with the lens hood.

Any ideas? Below is a link to my Flickr account so you can see the image (it's the only one uploaded, as I just created the account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/js_402/

Sorry if this is a dumb question or if I've posted in an incorrect area of the forum.

Thanks!

JoAnn

[Doug Sundseth]

Ghosting. It's a subspecies of lens flare, which is an internal reflection in the lens. It can also occur when a bright light hits the front element of a lens, even if the light isn't in frame. It'd commonly exacerbated if you use a cheap filter on the front of the lens, but it can happen with light bouncing around between different lens elements, too.

If you include a light source that is very much brighter than the rest of the scene in frame, this is both normal and essentially impossible to prevent. But it can be reduced by using no filters or only very good filters and by keeping very bright light sources from shining directly on the front element (lens hoods help).