Hi- I'm new to this forum and new to the XL1S, which I bought about a month ago. I have noticed that when I shoot into a brightly lit subject or towards the sun, I get this weird blue "moon - for lack of a better word" in the shots that have strong backlighting. Or if the sun is included in the shot, I get this blue streak. Is this germain to the canon lenses? If so, is there a way around it. Thanks for the helpful comments.
Fred

Probably the result of a severe lighting situation. Changing the lighting or camera angle should help.

Cameras with solid state imaging devices (CCD's) will exhibit this type of phenomenon when pointed towards very bright light sources. It is in no way related to the Canon optics. It is covered in the Owners Manual. All CCD camcorders show it.

Jeff

Be careful that you are not frying your CCD chip! CCD chips will
burn away under sunlight (if you point it directly at the sun)!
When the sun is at dusk or dawn you can capture it. And you
might be able to capture it to during the day with lots of ND
filters. But be careful, be very careful.

Is there any kind of formula as to how much ND filtration you need or what minimum maximum F-stop to use for complete safety when shooting around or at the sun? How do you know at what point you will start to do damage?

Thanks

That blue moon is called a lens flare. Sometimes they are cool looking,
many times not. To get rid of it as Don said, either try a different angle
or get a "flag" to shade the lens.

One reason you may never notice flare on a cheaper camcorder with a lesser lens is that the beast is so noisy in poor light that the noise in the image actually masks the flare effects.