Image issues with my Nikon D300...HELP, please!

[joeinid]

I was told by Nikon and others to NEVER use compressed air on the sensor, a blower brush or rocket blower is OK though. Just be careful.

Joe

[BlueChiaro]

Originally Posted by joeinid

I was told by Nikon and others to NEVER use compressed air on the sensor, a blower brush or rocket blower is OK though. Just be careful.

Joe

I'm so cheap that I use a twenty year old empty elmer's glue bottle that I cut the seal point out of. It makes a serviceable "bulb" blower for getting dust off lenses and okay for this instance, too.

[chops-tube]

Originally Posted by joeinid

I was told by Nikon and others to NEVER use compressed air on the sensor

Joe

This is true (that the manufacturers say this), but do you really know why? It's not because of oils or other chemicals getting on the sensor.

The reason being is that there's a less than paper thin piece of glass in front of the sensor (as well as a couple of filters). If you do not know how to regulate your "trigger finger" with the compressed air, you can easily blast the air onto the sensor, breaking that thin piece of glass in front of the sensor. When that happens, shards of glass embed themselves in the sensor (or scratches it), and the entire sensor needs to be replaced, costing nearly as much as the camera body itself.

I've been in the photography business for over 10 years off and on, and dealing with plenty of professionals one on one on a daily basis. When they had dust issues, I was the one they came to. And guess what I used 99.9% of the time... A plain old can of compressed air. Never ever had a single issue.

Over those years, I used compressed air on my Canon 30D, 60D, 10D as well as on a couple of Nikon's that I had for a very short while. Not one problem ever. However, I now have an ancient Olympus E-300 work horse with auto sensor cleaning and don't have to worry about dust at all. I also had their TOTL E-3 for a year or so, but didn't like the image quality of it, so sold it and bought a pair of NHT 2.9's with the money! LOL Believe it or not, the E-300 produces much nicer images and colors. It just doesn't have the dynamic range of the E-3, but I can manage with that.


Also, the best way to check your DSLR for dust is to adjust the lens to roughly 50mm @ f/8, camera set to ISO 100, then aim straight up into the clear blue sky and take a shot. The even, clear blue gives you an easy, wonderful opportunity to detect ANY dust anywhere on the sensor.

Anyway, just my 2 pennies.