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!)

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

Lately, I’ve started to tinker more with my photos. It’s been fun so far…

Wow, another fan!

Thanks for the comment. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. I’ll email you.