Strange object in Iphone 14 photo

That kind of spots occur when a direct light is in the frame. The first shot has the sun covered by the clouds. The second one (affected by the spot) has direct sun rays reaching the lenses.

In order to avoid the flares the lenses should be shadowed. I get that many times it's impossible to put the lens in the shadow without having the shade ending in the frame.

Sometimes the flares can be removed with some retouching. This is your JPG version retouched:

If you're interested I can try to retouch the original file. Your spot example isn't particularly difficult to mask.

Let me know. I can provide a link where you can upload the photo.

Have you been using an iPhone as the camera? And HDR enabled?

The green spots are very typical for HDR artefacts. The most recent iPhone models will automatically use Smart HDR or Deep Fusion, when the lighting has high contrast and the camera does not detect moving objects. Then the camera will take several photos in quick succession and fuse them into a HDR image to bring out details in the highlights and shadows. This will work well, if the scene is completel static.

But the clouds are moving and this can result in moving bright spots at the border of the clouds close to the sun, and then the HDR fusion may fail and create typically greenish bright dots. I am seeing them frequently, when my iPhone decides to use Smart HDR, when it should not because of moving objects like clouds or glittering waves on the water, or leaves moving in the wind - smart HDR and deep fusion are prone to cause artefacts, if very bright image areas are moving, while the iPhone is taking the series of shots to be fused into one image.

The pattern of spots in your image is spectacular. Great photo!

I guess I'm looking at the same detail you're referring to:

To me it still seems something related to a lens flare/light reaching the sensor.

The fifth image in this thread shows a flare cluster (4 dots):

iPhone 13 pro lens flare - Apple Community

My opinion is that it's something similar. Consider that the photos taken on a smartphone are basically always automatically elaborated in a way or another: it could be even a mix of optical + software "glitch".

I agree with you that your example is more visible and the cluster is more accentuated. Your photo has a stronger light source, though (the sun, even if it's partially covered by the clouds).

It’s lens flare.

Any bright light within the frame of pretty much any camera system with a lens system will have those.

The first of the first pair of photos posted has no point light source in frame, the second of the pair does.

Damage to or dirt on the lens can also be involved, so check for that.

I don’t have an iPhone 14 camera handy to check for any Deep Fusion or other oddities.

It's a lens flare. Even if it's annoying, it's a normal behavior.

Just search "iPhone lens flare" on internet and you'll find many similar results.

most Of my iPhone pictures after zooming in have so many wierd things, you have to sometimes look for them but they are there. I have more than 100 pics like this. I haven’t read all the post because I was so excited to see someone else has this on their phone as well. What is it