Dust Detection

[david strachan]

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A pinhole will show every spot of dust, or corrosion.

 

But it may make you neaurotic.

[blueskyoveraquatic]

I had used in-camera dust detection with 50mm Summarit-M, and it worked for me.

1. Focus at 0.8m

2. Aperture = f/16

3. Point at blue or gray sky :-)

4. Take a photo

5. Look at the spots

6. Open shutter

7. Use hand blower to blow out the dust on the sensor

8. Turn of my camera

Repeat step 1 thru 8 until the photo looks clean

Dennis

[sblutter]

For me, when the sensor is really dirty I do a wet clean - about twice a year.  Seems to keep it clean for a quite a while.  There are many kits these days that work well.  Once you get over the initial fear, its easy, fast and thorough.  The full frame swabs are great.

[jevidon]

I noticed while in post processing that I had accumulated a lot of dust. I used the white back of a 16x20 mounting board, at f16, focus at infinity and base ISO and shot while moving the camera.

Base ISO assures that you will get a long enough exposure so that camera movement will blur out any texture in the subject.

After playing with the white balance and brightness control in PS I got a nice white image with the dust showing up bright and clear.

I then used my Arctic Butterfly to clean and then re-checked. After two more tries, I was satisfied even though there were still a very few faint dust marks.

 

As has been said, you can't get rid of all of them. But then, that is what the healing brush and/or clone stamp are for in Photoshop.