How to check and clean your sensor

Scott Murray

Senior Member
Ummm...LensPens are for cleaning lenses, not sensors.
Actually they do sensors aswell.

Screenshot 2013-12-24 03.44.12.png


I use this one.
Screenshot 2013-12-24 03.47.47.png
 
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PapaST

Senior Member
Step one, look at the face of your camera and look for markings that resemble D600. If you see it, then your sensor is dirty. ;)


I keed I keed.
 

J-see

Senior Member
What is advised in regards to sensor cleaning? It's only yesterday after reading here I realized I too have some auto-sensor cleaning option.

I did the in camera sensor photo and see nothing but squares so I guess that's ok. But is it best to only use the option when noticing spots or to use it daily?

I normally have a "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" mentality but that could be contra-productive in this case.
 

Felisek

Senior Member
How to check your sensor

1. Find a large flat surface of bright uniform colour. I use my white ceilings.
2. Set the camera in manual mode and lens in manual focus.
3. Set a small aperture, e.g. f/16
4. Set the shutter speed slow enough to overexpose by about +1 or +2 EV.
5. Point your camera at the surface. Get close to it, but not too close, you don't want a shadow.
6. Focus the lens at infinity, you want to blur out any specs on the surface.
7. Take a picture.

You should get a bright uniform smooth area in your picture. You will see any dust specs from the sensor. The small aperture makes them sharper and easier to spot.

How to clean your sensor

I use Eyelead gel stick (available on Amazon). Very good German engineering. Doesn't use any liquid. It is a piece of sticky gel that grabs all the dust from the surface of the sensor. Then, the dirt is transferred to a piece of sticky paper. The idea is that the paper is more sticky than the gel, so it collects the dust from the gel, not he other way around. After this the paper can be disposed of and the gel reused.
 

Eyelight

Senior Member
I had noticed a few spots that would pop up in the same place, but nothing like what I found when I made a Sensor Dust Image. This is just shooting a normal photo and not using the cameras reference photo feature. There ref photo is for software to use.

Set lens to smallest f/stop, focus to infinity, if zoom lens set to longest focal length, shoot a brightly lit white surface about 10 inches (250mm) distance, process the shot for the best look and voila, you get this.

DSC_1821_150203_1024_001.jpg
 

J-see

Senior Member
I noticed my sensor can be named Sir Spotalot after shooting a clear blue sky and removing the highlights in post.

I have that many, I was tempted to delete the shot instead of removing the spots. Normal shots they hardly show but blue skies make them stand out magnificiently.
 
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