How to tell when your lens & sensor are dirty...

[davidc]

In shooting last night's picture I noticed a surprising amount of specks to be cloned out. At first I assumed they were tiny bits on my backdrop but soon realised they were possibly dust too... in the end my lens and sensor were absolutely filthy!

Here is a contrast enhanced picture showing the state of them! I think the lens had an oil or grease print on the rear element, probably from a finger, which you can see on the upper right and the lens and sensor were both very dusty.

dirty sensor.jpg

(651.89 KiB) Not downloaded yet

Thankfully after cleaning both look a LOT better!

[Mike Farley]

That sure is one dirty sensor. I have found that my Canon bodies do seem to attract dust, the auto sensor cleaning feature notwithstanding. Occasionally cleaning the sensor using a blower which removes static, humidity and dust seems to help. Strangely, my Panasonic bodies do not seem to suffer from dust. The only problem one of them had was a clumsy user putting his thumb on the sensor, as I reported recently.

http://kohglobal.com/JetAir.html

[davidc]

If you think Canons are bad, have pity on our poor Nikon cousins...

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/11/21 ... -timelapse

[Mike Farley]

If you think Canons are bad, have pity on our poor Nikon cousins...

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/11/21 ... -timelapse

I always have sympathy for those who shoot with Nikons ...............

But that is a lot of muck to build up inside the camera. Coupled with the D800 focus problems, it does not seem that Nikon is having the best time of it at the moment with its full frame DSLRs.