Now it seems that the anti-dust system for the Sony Alpha A100 cameras are not 100% dust-proof... I managed to collect quite a number of dust in using it. Perhaps due to some carelessness in leaving the lens mount opened to air for more than a few seconds when changing lens once or because I changed lens in Mt Sinai where it was extremely dusty.
Somehow, I had a hunch that my camera may have some dust that day and I took a photo of the cloudy sky so I could go home and look for them. And I was right... this is what I spotted after doing some levelling
Cropped, see the circular spot on the top left..
That image wasn't good for spotting dust because I left the aperture wide open... in order to look for dust, I should use a smaller aperture instead. So I did another test shot on my white wall with my fingers crossed... hoping that I won't have much dust problems...
More spots on the sensor than acne on my face... yikes.. resized image
Not the cleanest thing around. Given that the sensor is about 2.3cm by 1.5cm in size, the largest dust must be about 200 micron in size or lesser, at best it is barely visible. Now I wanted to trace when did I get all these dust, so I search for some suitable old photographs to test for the mega dust spot on the top right of the frame and this is what I found...
Crop of the same area in a photo taken in the office before venturing outside for more photographs.
It proves that one shouldn't change lens in a dusty environment as these dust spots are most likely fresh from Mt Sinai... Since it wasn't there just before I went outside to take photos and changed lens. Finally, I had to do something that I dread doing from the day I bought a dSLR - to clean the sensor. Since I knew that physically cleaning it with swabs and cleaning liquid may potentially scratch the filter in front of the sensor introducing a nice streak in all my future photos, I would rather try non-physical methods (aka blowing). So I bought this online
Now Sony's anti-dust strategy comprises of 2 stages. An anti-static coating on the sensor and a not so effective sensor shaking technology. We know that the shaking part is not 100% effective, but if the anti-static is good, I should be able to remove most, if not all dust easily with a blower since the dust would not be attached strongly to the sensor.
This is what I get after my first try
What the heck was that at the bottom right?!!
After blowing for minutes and bringing the camera out for another few hours shoot with many changing of lens.
We can still see some stubborn dusts on the same few spots of the sensor but most of them had been blown away. Once again we have a not so effective anti-static coating on the sensor. But I'm satisfied since these dust spots, being much smaller than those mega dust spots, do not affect image quality in 99.9% of my shots. Or so I wished to believe.
What about dust in my fixed lens camera? The H1 is almost 1 year old and does it face any dust issue?
Spotless!
photoblog sony a100 alpha
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