While addressing sensor spots on my Z7ii, I began to notice a tiny bright spot in my test images. I addressed the dust spots just fine, but not this bright spot. It would not disappear, but it would move. How I did my testing was to go outside and take a photo of the cloudless blue sky. I then examined the image in Lightroom. I got to thinking what was happening and the thought came to me that I was not always point the camera at the exact same aresa in the sky. It was not on a tripod; I was hand holding it. This made me think that this could be a lens flare. If it was a lens flare, then I though the spot should move if I changed focal lengths and sure enough it did. I had been doing my testing at 100mm, but at 200mm and 400mm there was no spot. In my test shots, the sun was roughly 90 degrees to the side, i.e. I was not shooting into the sun. The last shot that I made was directly opposite the direction of the sun, and no flare was found in the image.
All tests were done with sun shade in place. When shooting into the sun (e.g. sunsets), I am not surprised to encounter very prominent lens flare issues, but this was not into the sun. The spot I am talking about is very small. It can be round, but mostly it is elongated in shape.
Has anyone else observed this? Could I have a faulty lens? Should it be returned/replaced by Nikon?