Just recieved the M8, spots on pictures, dust ?

[fefe]

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Hi,

I just recieved my M8 and 35 cron and when taking pictures of bright items i found a large number of darker spots on the pictures, and I can find them on all the pictures where it is a bright area. I suspect it is dust on the sensor (I haven't yet looked at how to do that but from the pictures can anyone confirm ?).

This is actually visible without zooming on a regular screen and I see at least 7. It's getting dark here so I'll do more tests in daylight before I try to clean this up.

 

 

and a crop: this is pretty big

 

There is no way I could have put that much dust just by inserting at home the lense once, so I guess it was there before . Can it be something else ?

[elopezso]

No need to worry; it's just dust. Pretty much all cameras, not just Leicas, arrive with tons of dust on the sensor.

 

A quick cleaning will take care of it.

 

Ed

[tashley]

Hi,

I just recieved my M8 and 35 cron and when taking pictures of bright items i found a large number of darker spots on the pictures, and I can find them on all the pictures where it is a bright area. I suspect it is dust on the sensor (I haven't yet looked at how to do that but from the pictures can anyone confirm ?).

This is actually visible without zooming on a regular screen and I see at least 7. It's getting dark here so I'll do more tests in daylight before I try to clean this up.

 

 

There is no way I could have put that much dust just by inserting at home the lense once, so I guess it was there before . Can it be something else ?

 

Looks like dust to me - there are reports of some arriving with dusty sensors though both of mine were and remain very clear. Do you know what if anything happened to it whilst it was at your dealer's?

 

For a quick fix, set it to sensor clean and turn it upside down in a bathroom without carpets. Remove the lens, then gently blow a rocket blower into it. If that doesn't work, hunt down a Visible Dust Arctic Butterfly. If that fails, and it rarely does, you'll have to research the liquid cleaning route.

 

If it were me I'd whine at my dealer until he offered me enough cash back to buy the butterfly!!

 

Tim

[dpattinson]

The round spots may be something other than dust, some people reported what seemed to be lubricant from the shutter or some other fluid. In this case you may have to wet-clean the sensor, or you could get your dealer to pay for having it professionally wet-cleaned (which is what I would do for the first clean).

 

I had such spots on my sensor, they did not come off with vacuum or arctic butterfly. I ended up using swabs from an Austrian company called Green Clean, ymmv

 

They (spots) are much more obvious if you stop the lens right down, but disappear when it's wide open - another great reason to love the M lenses wide open

[fefe]

Well, I had it shipped from the US to Israel, so I will try the e-whining route and try to find a place near where I can buy some of these little air blowers . In the mean time I'll get dusty pictures.

 

I didn't plan to change lenses and just go with 1 in the beginning so I wasn't expecting to have to deal with dust .

[fefe]

The round spots may be something other than dust, some people reported what seemed to be lubricant from the shutter or some other fluid. In this case you may have to wet-clean the sensor, or you could get your dealer to pay for having it professionally wet-cleaned (which is what I would do for the first clean).

 

I had such spots on my sensor, they did not come off with vacuum or arctic butterfly. I ended up using swabs from an Austrian company called Green Clean, ymmv

 

They (spots) are much more obvious if you stop the lens right down, but disappear when it's wide open - another great reason to love the M lenses wide open

 

Now you're getting me worried.

And yes I went quickly through the few pictures I took, and I cannot see anythings on pictures taken at f2 and the pictures taken at f5.6 show those.

[photolandscape]

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This has been an annoying but easily fixed problem. I would agree that it is best to try to clean the sensor with an appropriate cleaning tool like the Arctic Butterfly first. If it is dust, that should do the trick.

 

My M8 had a couple dozen spots that look just like yours--they looked to be liquid-based--oil, or water originally, and , they wouldn't come off with a brush alone. So I bought Eclipse 2 (not Eclipse) from Adorama, and the swabs, and did a wet cleaning per the instructions. It did the trick. I have had occasional spots since then, but just dust spots, and just brushed or blew them off.

 

Whatever else you do, DO NOT use a blast of air from an aerosol can--can do lots of damage to a sensor.

[fefe]

I tried the gentle blowing with a "pear" I had, didnt change anything, I just have brushes and swabs to clean lenses so I didn't try yet more active cleaning for fear to damage the sensor. I'll try to get some appropriate swabs.

 

Damn, that is annoying, now I see only the spots when I look at pictures.

[Tim B]

Mine had these - I thought they all did!

 

This is very special dust manufactured in Solms to a very high standard by Leica themselves to provide us with a new skill - sensor cleaning, as the first thing to do with our new M8s.

 

It only shows up on smaller apertures and in fact is fairly easily dealt with, although it is much more a problem with the M8 than my Canon DSLR that almost never needs cleaning.

 

It would be interesting to know if recent production is less dusty than my February one.

 

I have only cleaned my sensor thoroughly once, with the Visible Dust brush system and a blast of air from my Giotto Hurricane. I didn't need the swab and Eclipse, which I also bought. Not yet anyway. It needs doing again after my Sinai desert trip, but the odd speck of dust rarely shows up and can be easily cloned out.

 

No worries!

 

Tim