Thanks for the link, Carol. Good tips there. I'll go ahead and expand on it by adding some brief tips and instructions for detecting sensor dust in the first place, for anyone who might not already know. (I just got my first DSLR and it took me a little while to figure out a good technique for this.)
1. Make sure your lens is clean to begin with. You don't want to mess with cleaning inside your camera when a quick wipe on the lens would have fixed the problem.
2. Crank down that aperture, f/22 or smaller if you can. A lot of sensor dust doesn't show up at wider apertures like f/4.
3. Slow down the shutter speed to overexpose a bit - it can be hard to see dust in a dim exposure.
4. Pick as evenly lit and featureless of a subject as possible to shoot. A clear blue sky or blank white wall are good choices.
5. Set manual focus so whatever you're shooting will be blurry. Otherwise you might mistake small details on the target for sensor dust. Focus to infinity if shooting a wall; focus close if shooting the sky.
6. Turn off IS/VR (if applicable) and move the camera a bit during the exposure to further blur any actual features of the target you're shooting.
7. If you really want to rule out lens dust, repeat the test with a different lens.
One more thing - if you've never done this before, prepare to be shocked at what you see!
Oh and last but not least, be sure to zoom in and pan around the image, otherwise some "sensor dust" you see might actually be a speck of dust or something on your screen.
For an evenly lit subject, you can just pick your monitor when you open up a blank page or something. I useally use photoshop i open up a new white document zoom in a bit, then hit tab and voilla. Just make sure that you move or zoom your lens in and out during the exposure so dust on your monitor and lens get ruled out.
Posted by Carol Hyman on April 3, 2007 at 11:50 AM
Fred,
There are a zillion articles out there and here at NPN, there have been many comments made ...
My old D100 sounds like yur Cannon D30; it doesn't stay clean! Drove me to drink ;^) I just bought Dust-Aid but I haven't tried it yet; Guy Tal tested it and some of the folks have had great success with it.
I'm sure there are many words of wisdom out there in the Universe.
Discussion
3 replieshttp://www.doubleexposure.com/Caponigro_Dust.shtml
Carol
1. Make sure your lens is clean to begin with. You don't want to mess with cleaning inside your camera when a quick wipe on the lens would have fixed the problem.
2. Crank down that aperture, f/22 or smaller if you can. A lot of sensor dust doesn't show up at wider apertures like f/4.
3. Slow down the shutter speed to overexpose a bit - it can be hard to see dust in a dim exposure.
4. Pick as evenly lit and featureless of a subject as possible to shoot. A clear blue sky or blank white wall are good choices.
5. Set manual focus so whatever you're shooting will be blurry. Otherwise you might mistake small details on the target for sensor dust. Focus to infinity if shooting a wall; focus close if shooting the sky.
6. Turn off IS/VR (if applicable) and move the camera a bit during the exposure to further blur any actual features of the target you're shooting.
7. If you really want to rule out lens dust, repeat the test with a different lens.
One more thing - if you've never done this before, prepare to be shocked at what you see!
Oh and last but not least, be sure to zoom in and pan around the image, otherwise some "sensor dust" you see might actually be a speck of dust or something on your screen.
There are a zillion articles out there and here at NPN, there have been many comments made ...
My old D100 sounds like yur Cannon D30; it doesn't stay clean! Drove me to drink ;^) I just bought Dust-Aid but I haven't tried it yet; Guy Tal tested it and some of the folks have had great success with it.
I'm sure there are many words of wisdom out there in the Universe.
Carol
http://hy-tec-training.com