Photoshop Tutors

Dread of the dusty sensor

If you’re shooting with a digital SLR and start to notice dark specks appearing in your photos, don’t get all short of breath: this is not caused by ectoplasm seeping in from the spirit world. It’s just dust. When you change lenses on an SLR, dust can get inside the camera and settle on the sensor, darkening little spots in the pictures you take.

Your camera may already have a built-in sensor-dusting function, but most cameras will still require a careful manual cleaning.

1. Purchase a self-cleaning SLR.

Dust specks on the sensor cause dark spots like the ones marring the sky in the photo on the left. You can see the spots close-up on the right.

There are currently two cameras which have a built in feature to clean the sensor, the E1 and Evolt E-300, manufactured by Olympus. Every time you turn the camera on or activate the filter, a Supersonic Wave Filter vibrates the sensor which shakes the dust off. Included are adhesive strips which run along the sides of the sensor to collect the dust. From my experience the system works pretty well. It’s unfortunate that other manufacturers don’t offer something similar.

2. Clean your camera with care. If you don’t own an Olympus SLR sooner or later you’ll need to clean your sensor. You can send it to the manufacturer for a professional cleaning if you’re apprehensive about doing it yourself. Unfortunately, that’s not a very practical or cost effective way to handle the problem every time you seen a new spot. Although you should always be careful, the best solution to the problem is to clean the dust yourself.

Most sensors have a protective glass covering, and unfortunately if you scratch or damage it, there’s a good chance the manufacturer’s warranty will not cover repairs. Try not to be casual about what you put inside the camera. A note: never blow compressed air into your camera. Compressed air uses propellants that can leave a residue and create a film over your sensor.

Use products that are made specifically for sensor cleaning. A number of companies make them, including Photographic Solutions and Visible Dust. Kinetronics’ Speck Grabber is useful for getting at particular bits of debris, since it has a little light built in. And Kodak sells its own sensor-cleaning kit and provides detailed instructions on how to clean its cameras’ sensors.

When you’re ready to clean the sensor, put the camera into sensor-cleaning mode so that the sensor is exposed (check the manual about how to do this with your particular model) and remove the lens. You can use a bulb blower to blow dust off the sensor; just make sure you hold the camera up so that the dust falls out instead of settling inside again. Follow the instructions of the cleaning product you’ve chosen. Usually this will involve carefully swabbing the surface of the protective glass over the sensor.

To check that you have gotten rid of all the dust take a picture of a blank wall or piece of paper. Look at it at full size on a computer monitor and see if you can detect any remaining specks.