Monday I’d intended to get into town early(ish), hook up with mate, then when he’d finished work mid-afternoon wander around somewhere together for a little photo sesh.
Didn’t happen.
Tuesday I’d intended to get into town early(ish), have a little photo sesh then hook up with mate for a bit of a chinwag.
Didn’t happen.
Just as well really cos the weather turned out to be absolutely crap and if I’d pursued my plan I’d have ended up soaking wet probably. Oh well.
Wednesday, and with essential supplies like milk, food and (more importantly) tobacco etc running desperately low I had no choice but to get into town.
And eventually hooked up with mate, and wandered out for a fairly brief little photo sesh.
Quite good though. Very overcast with some really dramatic clouds (both in colour and formation) which, curiously, seemed to render the lighting quite good for pic-taking. Well, from some angles at least!
Bit of a snag when I got back home and started processing them though.
A huge problem with the cloud pics I’d taken! For there, right in the sky, was a most unwholesome… er… “blob”.
“Dammit” thinks I, though probably in somewhat stronger terms. Cos I’d noticed something very similar on a few of the shots I’d taken during my last session when I was using a different lens (so it can’t have been crap on the lens). And it was pretty much in the same position on all of the affected pics.
So what this suggests to me, in my complete and utter ignorance, is that there’s dust on the sensor!
Aargh! Blast! I just knew it was a bad idea to start getting into this lens-changing stuff. Bloody hell. Curse my laziness for trying to get out of carrying two cameras around all the time!
Anyway, given that there were a handful of the cloud pics that I really wanted to keep from today’s session I managed to “make good” the flaw with a little bit of tinkering (courtesy of a nifty little app named Photofiltre. Wouldn’t use Photoshop. Mainly cos I haven’t installed it on the infernal machine. Mainly cos I looked at it once and just couldn’t understand how the hell to use it!).
Now let’s be very clear on this. I’m not normally into tinkering with photos in such a manner, and certainly not the “documentary” type ones that I take.
But with this particular bunch, well, I was prepared to make an exception. I have however indicated those that I’ve messed around with by adding the suffix “edit” to the file names… just so there’ll be no misunderstandings.
Anyway, the point is, I suspected a dirty sensor to be at the bottom of it all. So haul out the old manual and remind myself of how to clean the damn thing. And if that doesn’t work I guess it’ll be a case of tracking down the nearest Samsung service centre. Huh. That’s all I need.
Just as well I’ve got the GX20 (oh, and the Canon) as backups.
But I’m still miffed.
Hi Mike,
I live in the same town as you, have been following you for a while now, am always interested in reading your adventures.
I have an interest in photography, am very much a beginner and am looking for some help, would you be willing to have me accompany you soem time on a photo session so that you can show me a few tricks of the trade? I have just become the proud owner of a Panasonic G1, which you will either love or hate being as its not a proper SLR, and could do with learning how to use settings etc.
Hi!
Wow, another fan!
Thanks for the comment. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. I’ll email you.
i think you did a great job “tinkering” with the photos to correct the bad spot. I’ve done that in the past.
Lately, I’ve started to tinker more with my photos. It’s been fun so far…
Turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. And when I look at the “offending” pics now, even knowing where the bad spot was, I find it difficult to spot the retouching.
Nevertheless, there’s still something in me that seems to instinctively rebel against this type of manipulation.
There is no need to ‘rebel’ Mike, as documentary photos are more about what is seen by the photographer; the dust was not seen by you, so its fine to remove it.
In the days of film, photographers had to “spot” film scratches and dust marks on prints. The integrity of your vision is still there, don’t start beating your self up (me and Tim will do that for you)
There is also a clone and healing brush in Lightroom that can do a whole batch for you, as the dust stays in the same place
works fine
Changing lens, hmm… when you change lens make sure you turn the power off on the camera as the sensor is still active (has a static charge) and acts as a dust magnet in this state. The dust could have also been there for quite some time, as it only tends to show up when small apertures are used like f8- f22. Further most zoom lenses suck in dust like a vacuum cleaner, its also a good idea to vacuum out your camera bag for this reason as dust settles on your kit in the bag and then gets sucked in and up when in use.
The downside to this though is if the cameras self cleaning won’t work it costs you, either buy your own sensor cleaning kit (the good ones cost more than a service clean, but work out cheaper in the long run for repeated dust offenders) or take it to the shop, just check how long it will take as some manufacturers can take over two weeks
The Arctic butterfly (sensor cleaning brush) or a Spec Grabber (sensor cleaning tool) are both good for removing DUST. Pollen on the other hand is worse and also can and does adhere to the sensor, it often needs to be removed with a wet type cleaner to remove it as it tends to be greasy
Yeah, I hear what you say about removing dust and stuff… dunno why though but there’s still something in me that seems instinctively averse to messing with photos like this. However, as you’ve now seen, with my “scenic” type stuff I’ve sort of bitten the bullet and compromised.
As regards the muck, first thing I did was check up in the manual and follow the recommended procedure for sensor cleaning. Which entailed ensuring a good power supply, locking the mirror up, and then blowing the dust away with one of those puffy things.
Huh! Waste of time. In fact, I think I’ve now blown a bit more dust onto the sensor! Just my sodding luck. P’raps I need to get one of those rocket blower gizmos rather than the stupid puffer thing that seems to sigh more than blow.
My next course was to get in touch with Samsung to find out where their nearest service centre is. Turns out its bloody miles away! And I’ve got a really bad feeling it’d cost me an arm and a leg.
So then a bit of web research, consequence of which I’ve read absolutely loads about sensor cleaning and stuff. Sounds hugely finicky and I’ve begun to get another really bad feeling that if I have a go meself I’ll probably end up having to get a new sensor!
However, in the course of all this research I came across some examples of what dust’s supposed to look like on pics. Which makes me think p’raps my problem isn’t dust at all. Cos whereas the examples were showing little black specky things my “dust” is blobby and sort of not specky at all… virtually transparent in fact. Just sort of a “darkening” of affected areas. Bit like a shadow really. Which, you having mentioned pollen, makes me wonder whether its that.
One thing’s definite though… its not the lens cos it shows up on shots taken with different lenses, and always in the same place.
And come to think of it, it could well have been there for some time cos the shots where I first noticed it were taken with a smaller aperture than I normally use… customarily I’ll shoot at f5.6 or larger whereas the offending shots were… um… f8 or smaller I think.
As regards switching the camera off before lens-changing… yeah, I try to do that but there’ve been a couple of occasions when I’ve forgotten. Oops.
So where’s this “healing brush” to be found in LR then?
In the meantime, I’m now totally depressed, sulking, and playing with the GX20 (but I do so love the 10… sob sob!)
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