What's the best way to see if you have a dust issue ?

BADGER.BRAD

BADGER.BRAD

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Hello,

Every time I've picked up my main camera ( not very often lately) and taken it out I've had dust issues in the resulting photos, I've not noticed it whilst taking the photos so My question is what colour or back ground would show up these issues so that I can make sure it is clean ? The camera is a Sony A6000.

Thanks all
 
Wot I do.

-Set the camera ISO to base, 100 or 200 or whatever the camera can do.
-Set a small aperture, f16, f32 or whatever the lens can do.
-Set focus to manual and to infinity.
-Point the camera at a white door.
-Aim to get a shutter speed of several seconds. If you're in a rather dark room and the shutter speed is 20 or 30 seconds go somewhere else or up the ISO until you get a more reasonable shutter speed but don't let the ISO go too high as you don't want noise confusing things. Anything from maybe 2 to 10 seconds is fine.
-Press the shutter and move the camera about, side to side or up and down, whilst the picture is taken. This is to prevent any detail on the door being recorded in the picture. What you should end up with is a grey picture with only any debris on the sensor showing.

Have fun.
 
woof woof said:
Wot I do.

-Set the camera ISO to base, 100 or 200 or whatever the camera can do.
-Set a small aperture, f16, f32 or whatever the lens can do.
-Set focus to manual and to infinity.
-Point the camera at a white door.
-Aim to get a shutter speed of several seconds. If you're in a rather dark room and the shutter speed is 20 or 30 seconds go somewhere else or up the ISO until you get a more reasonable shutter speed but don't let the ISO go too high as you don't want noise confusing things. Anything from maybe 2 to 10 seconds is fine.
-Press the shutter and move the camera about, side to side or up and down, whilst the picture is taken. This is to prevent any detail on the door being recorded in the picture. What you should end up with is a grey picture with only any debris on the sensor showing.

Have fun.
Click to expand...
Pretty much exactly what I do.
 
I normally try to check in daylight. Minimum aperture, point the camera at a blank bit of sky and take a picture.

IIRC a longer focal length will make the dust clearer.
 
Thanks everyone, I must admit I haven't done very much photography over the winter as I tend to turn to other hobbies. What I have done has been with a compact that I carry with me all the time, on the few occasions I have taken it out I've ended up with dust spots although the Sensor/lens had been cleaned the previous time. It always makes me wonder how the dust gets in there in the first place !
 
You might ask why you are getting so many issues with dust. I have a Sony A6600 and I bought this in December 2021 and up to last week had never had any dust problem. I regularly change lenses and use the camera at least once a week. However, last week I had my first dust spot which was large enough for me to easily see on the sensor so used my Rocket Blower to move it on. I believe by holding the camera downwards that the dust was blown out of the camera.

Dave
 
woof woof said:
Wot I do.

-Set the camera ISO to base, 100 or 200 or whatever the camera can do.
-Set a small aperture, f16, f32 or whatever the lens can do.
-Set focus to manual and to infinity.
-Point the camera at a white door.
-Aim to get a shutter speed of several seconds. If you're in a rather dark room and the shutter speed is 20 or 30 seconds go somewhere else or up the ISO until you get a more reasonable shutter speed but don't let the ISO go too high as you don't want noise confusing things. Anything from maybe 2 to 10 seconds is fine.
-Press the shutter and move the camera about, side to side or up and down, whilst the picture is taken. This is to prevent any detail on the door being recorded in the picture. What you should end up with is a grey picture with only any debris on the sensor showing.

Have fun.
Click to expand...
And when you've done that, take it into Lightroom and up the clarity slider...you'll be horified! :)
 
BADGER.BRAD said:
Thanks everyone, I must admit I haven't done very much photography over the winter as I tend to turn to other hobbies. What I have done has been with a compact that I carry with me all the time, on the few occasions I have taken it out I've ended up with dust spots although the Sensor/lens had been cleaned the previous time. It always makes me wonder how the dust gets in there in the first place !
Click to expand...

In the olden days with DSLR-s I did read that most of the sensor contamination was generated internally, small pieces coming off the various moving parts, the flappy mirror etc, and oil getting sprayed about. These days mirrorless should have much less of that. Apart from shredded plastic and oil from inside the camera I suppose some stuff is always going to work its way in from the outside world especially with zoom lenses which must I suppose suck in air and contaminants when you zoom them in and out.
 
Graham W said:
And when you've done that, take it into Lightroom and up the clarity slider...you'll be horified! :)
Click to expand...

I can usually get my cameras clean at the smallest aperture, if I want to. If there's something which only shows up at f16 I might not bother... but mostly I do as my OCD just can't cope with knowing it's there :D
 
A year or so back I noticed excessive dust in my main camera and decided to clean it.

I wished I'd kept the photos just as reference,

I set up a studio session in LR and tethered my camera to it.

I'm pretty sure I just removed any lens and pointed the camera at a white wall.

The trick was that when the photos came in to LR I'd set it up to automatically apply a sh*t load* of contrast, clarity and from memory lower the exposure so that any black dust dots were immediately obvious.

It was a very quick way of checking whether or not the sensor was clean without having to remove the card and upload images from it, then import into LR.

As it was the first time I'd attempted cleaning the sensor, I kept using too much fluid and had liquid marks on the sensor, but again, it was immediately obvious. In terms of that process, it got worse before it got better and I was convinced I'd made a mistake attempting it myself.

You might have to play around with what the settings are as I don't really remember - other than I messed about until I found something which made it immediately obvious. But it was definitely the tethered session which sped up the process a lot for me.

*Technical term.
 
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