Moonstone, I got the camera second hand, the guy had had it for about 6 months and hardly used it...But, I didn't notice any spots until I'd had the camera for a while! I really physically haven't got the money to pay for someone to clean my sensor and my OH was very, very careful. I really don't think that the sensor is damaged, but I think I (may) have discovered some of the reason that my photos have been over contrasty and have halos around them. I have had my camera constantly on the setting on Vivid+, which accentuates sharpness and constrast. Even when I have been out on sunny days, I have had this setting on, I have now chaged it to just vivid. I shoot in Raw though, so not sure if this setting will still apply??

Here are a couple of photos (the second one having been toned down a little in editing) taken recently, with my camera set to Vivid+

This seems a strange thread! Those pictures look fine to me except, yes, the colours are strong. I thought we were going to get something like through a misty or dirty window!

Ok, it must just be me!

I do most of my stuff now on a HP workstation which is a big professional laptop with a 17in screen. It just doesn't suit at the moment for me to be tucked away in my home office on a big 'proper' computer. The laptop has a good screen designed for images and CAD work, but the downside is some things are very small as 17in running at 1920 x whatever it is squeezes so much onto a screen. Your pictures look fine but they are quite small on my screen. You can obviously see them straight out of camera so I would expect the effects you are seeing are really there.

I hope things improve for you financially as quality photography generally does get expensive particularly if you want to enter the commercial photographic world.

Think perhaps because this is a secondhand camera you would be best to set the camera back to default as it would be if you had bought it new, most cameras have a single control for this, one click and you are back to factory condition.

Have just blown up the bottom shot and yes, if you blow it up it does pixelate - what is the original size and did you save it as a jpeg with a low count like 72? Otherwise apart from a very high colour I can't see any problem that could be attributed to the camera.

Why not take a shot with the Canon and one with the Nikon at the same settings and the same time and post them, perhaps we will understand what the problem is.

not sure there is such a word as pixelate but think you will understand what I mean

You would need to see the actual images I think to judge. Those above have obviously been resized down significantly as are those uploaded to Photobucket etc.

I reckon the Canon is easily as good as the Nikon, but the Nikon is a much newer model, the 300D Canon was the very first digital they did I think so it must be quite old now.

Que predictable response...

Rubbish! There is no way a Canon can be as good as a Nikon!

Anyway, ken rockwell says the D40 is excellent so it must be true.

Yeah, I believe you BC.