I shouldn’t have checked my camera for dust. I really shouldn’t. Especially knowing my personality.
I think out of sheer coincidence I noticed a spot on one of my pics. Then I decided to do a test shot and do Auto Levels in Photoshop. And then I saw all the dots on the screen.
6 hours, several dozen pec pads, lots of E2 solution, and almost 200 test shots later… I finally reached a point where it was clean enough that I didn’t want to risk making it worse.
(The reason the pics look different was the first was shot at the sky while the second was shot at a piece of paper with flash in my living room. I think the light gradient in the second shot is because the the lamp is to the right, and the weird pattern is just the paper’s texture/wrinkles).
Anyway, much of the time was wasted cleaning the wrong part of the sensor. I basically confused left and right as I was cleaning and I was trying to remove those specs in the bottom left corner unsuccessfully (there was more. Also, note to self: that means clean the top left corner). I should’ve read #4 on the Copper Hill cleaning method. Would’ve saved me a lot of trouble.
Also, I need to use less solution/wait longer. A lot of the time was spent removing the streaking caused by using too much solution.
I really hope future cameras will have a more effective dust removal system… (Olympus is supposed to have the best one right now)
Realistically, the dust isn’t actually noticeable in normal usage. These images were stopped down to F/22.
Anyway, I *was* going to blog about the Tour de Fat which I was at today, but after this ordeal, I think I’ll save it for the morning.
