quick check dust check

If you want to check if you have dust on the sensor or lens this is what I do, its NOT a tip on cleaning.

Get a sheet or couple of sheets of white A4 paper and prop it on the monitor screen,it should rest quite happily within the screen area.

Photograph the paper so the photo is completely white. Then display as a normal picture on the monitor. This should show up any dust spots, you can obviously use the monitor to get closer to examine every part of the picture.

To check if the dust spot is on the sensor

Repeat the above using a different lens. If the spot is still there then its on the sensor otherwise its just on that particular lens.

Hope this makes sense

Good tip Bazza

It's worth mentioning that if you crank up the contrast of your test pic files you'll get every little spec.

Sometimes the dust only apperas at certain speed/aperture settings and then - only in the sky for example.

You need to do this test with a small aperture, the smallest your lens will allow.

At wider apertures, especially if you have a lens that does 2.8 or bigger, you may not notice the dust on your images.

Alan.

WOW at least 2 members understood what I wrote, thank you. Its always difficult trying to explain in words the actions taken. The additional information provided is something I had never considered .

Bazza

I understood Bazza as I had a nightmare with my Nikon D50. I bit the bullet in the end and cleaned it (it's fine now) but I got to the point where every shot I wanted to keep required extensive PS work to get rid of 'blobs'

Thanks Bazza great tip.

Great tip - and following on from WW, smaller aperture means bigger F number, so say F32