DSLR - Dust

TempestSabre

I'm on the verge of buying a DSLR or a SuperZoom. I'm favoring the D50 at the moment as I much prefer the IQ of the samples I see. How big an issue is dust on the CCD (for you) and where do you go in Dublin /where would you recommend, to get it cleaned.

DotOrg

there's loads of dust on the sensors of my dslrs but i makes no difference as you only see it at high apertures which i don't use anyway, cleaning is pretty easy if a little expensive but a dSLR is 1000x better than a superzoom for me, the choice of lenses make the choice over a superzoom no-existant

rymus

cleaning aint that expensive... A copper hill kit can be gotten quite cheaply

JMcL

As DotOrg said you're never going to see the vast majority of sensor dust in most images. If there's a big bit of crud there, it might be visible at small apertures in areas of even tonality, like for example sky. These however are the easiest to clean up later in PS.

In two years I've never had to use anything other than a blower bulb on my 300D, just get a good one like the Giottos Rocketblower - the little ones with the brush for cleaning lenses are worthless. Just never be tempted to use canned air, they can spray liquid propellent which will leave your sensor in a real mess.

Go for the DSLR, cleaning isn't that big of a deal.

John

Roen

Do you have to get the Copperhill kits from the States or is there a local importer? I couldn't find anything closer using Google.

TempestSabre

Ok sounds likes it not that big a deal.

Valentia

Have a look here: http://chili-pix.ch/shop/product_info.php?currency=EUR&products_id=28&osCsid=a9a9456b6cc0abeb5a08dc37f3651ddc

This is where I got mine.

digitalbeginner

JMcL wrote:

In two years I've never had to use anything other than a blower bulb on my 300D, just get a good one like the Giottos Rocketblower - the little ones with the brush for cleaning lenses are worthless..

John

Don't blow, suck! Blowing into an enclosed area such as the innards of a dSLR can simply move the dust from one place to the another. I regularly use one of the car hand held vacuums particularly ones with attachments for narrow areas, but not too close! Have used this as a preventative measure since I got the camera last summer. No dust yet and I'm quite often changing lenses out of doors. Even got rid of midges in Turin!

rymus

digitalbeginner wrote:

Don't blow, suck!

Down with that sort of thing!

Don't blow or suck, swab!

440Hz

rymus wrote:

Down with that sort of thing!

Don't blow or suck, swab!

That's the spirit!! Will I make some signs?

rymus

i cant believe you havent already tbh...

440Hz

rymus wrote:

i cant believe you havent already tbh...

work in progress.... gotta make it family friendly afterall

redrob13

If dust and cleaning really are a concern for you (although by all the talk here it seems not to be that big a deal) it might be worth considering olympus. I know Olympus isn't the make all the cool kids around here opt for, but their dSLRs do have self cleaning / dust protection of the sensor. I got the E-500 twin lens kit from technikdirekt.de for a very good price and couldn't be happier ... I haven't had to worry about dust on the sensor once, despite plenty of lens changes in all sorts of conditions.

Olympus for details of the E-500

DPReview of the E-500

Roen

Valentia wrote:

Have a look here: http://chili-pix.ch/shop/product_info.php?currency=EUR&products_id=28&osCsid=a9a9456b6cc0abeb5a08dc37f3651ddc

This is where I got mine.

Thanks Valentia. Will order it now and probably a spare generic battery.

TempestSabre

Always liked Olympus. We have a Olympus point and shoot 35mm camera. Takes excellent photos. Had a look at the review you linked to I like the samples. Theres a nice quality to them.

JMcL

TempestSabre wrote:

Always liked Olympus. We have a Olympus point and shoot 35mm camera. Takes excellent photos. Had a look at the review you linked to I like the samples. Theres a nice quality to them.

One thing to be wary of with Olympus is that the sensor they use has a cropping factor of 2x as opposed to 1.6x on Canon, or 1.5x for Nikon. Fine if you want to shoot things that are far away, but if you want to do decent wideangle, it's time to remortgage.

A quick look on AC Foto shows the Olympus 7-14mm lens (giving the field of view of a 14-28mm lens on a full frame or 35mm camera) going for €1797. This is admittedly pretty wide by any standards, but still! There's an 11-22mm (22-44mm equiv) for €848, which is still pretty steep.

John

GilesKS

Yes, best off with the D50 over a superzoom. Dust isn't a big problem, speaking from experience with a D70. Get a Giotto Rocketblower from Jessops and if there's still residual dust the Copperhill method works great. I bought one of the kits from Chili-Pix as well and it works great. Although, the electrostatic brush from them was a waste of time and money - stick with the spatula, PecPads & Eclipse.

There's no point paying someone to clean it for you when you can do it yourself easily, cheaply, and immediately on demand. Besides, if you give it to someone else you don't know what they might do to it.

You shouldn't need to clean that much anyway, perhaps every few weeks even with changing lenses.

TempestSabre

GilesKS wrote:

...

You shouldn't need to clean that much anyway, perhaps every few weeks even with changing lenses.

One person needs to clean it every few weeks and another every year?

JMcL

TempestSabre wrote:

One person needs to clean it every few weeks and another every year?

It depends on a few things, if you take lots of pics in dusty environments and/or change lenses a lot, you'll probably end up with more dust bunnies. Some zoom lenses also act as very good vacumn pumps and can suck dust in when zooming even if you never change lenses. If you change lenses withh the camera powered up, the sensor will attract more dust as it's charged (you should always turn it off, but I'm usually too lazy). Lastly some cameras seem for whatever reason to just attract less dust - I've read contradicting reports that CMOS sensors as used by Canon supposedly attract less dust than CCD sensors used by most other manufacturers.

The main thing is not to get too hung up on it. If you take a test shot (make aperture as small as possible, turn off autofocus, take a shot of something bright - sky, white sheet of paper etc), and look at it in PS/Elements (after doing an auto levels), your sensor will almost always show some crud, even if you've just cleaned it. The important thing is that in the real world they'll rarely be an issue. You'll never get rid of it all.

Most cleaning should just involve using a good blower like the Rocketblower occasionally, which takes about 2 minutes max. I've never yet after 2 years had to take the plunge and go for Copperhil/Visible Dust etc.

John