Smudges clearly visible in photos of the sky. I dialled up the contrast to show them better.

As you can see, there are smudges in this photo (the most visible smudge it just above the bird’s right wing). When I wrote about them last night I assumed they were on the lens, but after a thorough cleaning (I even ran the camera through the dishwasher–kidding) the smudges are still present. Verdict: My camera is broken. Those smudges must be on the sensor, likely caused when I dropped it. Looks like I’ll be getting a new camera sooner than I thought. It’s a drag, though, because I was hoping to keep this camera as a spare for times when I didn’t want to take out the big DSLR. I’m going to hit the camera store downtown today and see if there’s any chance of a quick fix, but it’s very unlikely. Oh well. Crying over spilt milk won’t get it back into the bottle, right.

Gotta say, this was just a lucky photo. The rest is pretty much self-explanatory.