Dust problem

[HomeingPigeon]

So I was uploading some pictures and saw these spots. I then took a picture of my wall hoping that that would show all the spots. I put a circle around all the spots I could find. Do these look like dust to you? How would I go about getting these spots to go away? I have a Nikon D40.

Thanks

 

[telecomm]

Yeah, it's probably dust (though it's had to tell from that shot with all the compression artifacts).

See here for some suggestions.

The bottom line is don't worry too much about it, it probably won't have any effect on the majority of shots you're likely to take.

 

[HomeingPigeon]

Thanks for the info telecomm

 

[telecomm]

No problem.

I'm still a bit of a noob when it comes to dSLRs, but if there's one thing I think I've learned, it's that a bit of dust really isn't a big deal.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

So I was uploading some pictures and saw these spots. I then took a picture of my wall hoping that that would show all the spots. I put a circle around all the spots I could find. Do these look like dust to you? How would I go about getting these spots to go away? I have a Nikon D40.

Thanks

You can clean the sensor, but soon enough more dust will accumulate on it. Small dust like that in an image can easily be cleaned with PSE, CS3, etc.

 

[canonguy]

No problem.

I'm still a bit of a noob when it comes to dSLRs, but if there's one thing I think I've learned, it's that a bit of dust really isn't a big deal.

Dust on your lens is not a big deal... Dust on your sensor is.

Remove your lens...remove the UV filter (if you don't have one, get one) and clean it front and back, and clean the lens front and back.

Take another picture and see if the spots appear in the same place. If they do, it is dust on your image sensor. If this is the case you need to take it to a professional to be cleaned. Do not attempt to clean the sensor yourself, if it damaged the camera is junk.

 

[telecomm]

Dust on your lens is not a big deal... Dust on your sensor is.

It really depends how many dust spots you've got. If you're post processing your photos anyway, it probably takes about 1 second to clean up each dust spot. So, 6 or 7 dust spots, 6 or 7 seconds added to your post processing. And that only on shots above, say, f/16. For me, that's less than 1 in every 10 photos.

IMHO, not a bid deal at all.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

Dust on your lens is not a big deal... Dust on your sensor is.

Remove your lens...remove the UV filter (if you don't have one, get one) and clean it front and back, and clean the lens front and back.

Take another picture and see if the spots appear in the same place. If they do, it is dust on your image sensor. If this is the case you need to take it to a professional to be cleaned. Do not attempt to clean the sensor yourself, if it damaged the camera is junk.

That's a lot of work. A little dust on the lens usually doesn't show on the photos. What I do is to focus the camera manually on a clear sky, close the lens aperture to f/16-f/22, and take a photo. That will show sensor dust.

 

[davegregory]

If it's dust on your sensor you can buy kits to clean it with from your local camera store. ***WARNING*** You can void your warranty doing this. If you're not comfortable have a professional clean it for you. I won't try to sway you either way, doing it yourself or paying to have it done, as it's really whatever you're comfortable with. I just want to inform you of your choices. It doesn't look too bad from your photo, so you may want to get rid of the spots using iPhoto or whatever photo management software you use.

My camera constantly has dust on the sensor, despite Canon's (useless) sensor cleaning mechanism. I usually just clone it out in ACR.