Archive for March, 2007

You know that I’m using a Nikon D80 camera. When I decided to buy it one of my colleagues asked me why I don’t buy a Canon EOS 400D instead, because Canon has already addressed the sensor dust issue with its EOS Integrated Cleaning System. From the whole cleaning system especially the Self Cleaning Sensor Unit got lots of publicity.
I’ve just encountered with an article: Review: Dust removal systems / sensor cleaning that compares the performance of four cameras’ dust removal systems and an other one: Testing Sensor Dust Cleaning Options with Canon’s 400D, that writes about testing the 400D’s capabilities in this area.
The first one says about the Canon solution: “We estimate that the effectiveness of this system is 5%.” The article supports its statement with test photos as well. It’s worth to look at them.
And second one says: “I feel this is a very disappointing performance.” (The author of this article mentiones pushing and pulling a zoom lens as something that lets dust into the camera even though the lens is not detached.)

What’s the solution then?
There must remain some hope for us poor beginners to protect our precious cameras and the pictures we intend to make with them.
I found two methods one could use, possibly in a combined way:

• physical cleaning of the sensor by yourself or the service
• software based “dust removal” using a reference photo which is an available solution in both the Canon and Nikon worlds.

Popularity of my pictures on Flickr on 20 March 2007 is shown below by number of views.

Great colors again.

I used the built in flash in commander mode and a borrowed SB-800 speedlight in remote mode to achieve this. Was it worth the efforts?

I love its colors. What do you think?