"resilient hair" on pictures

Hello Hello,

New here, been lurking for a few days. I'm quite new to digital photography, to not say completely new, and have recently (last week) acquired a Pentax K-x DSLR.

It works great, except for one minor problem: I've noticed this odd "hair" appearing frequently on pictures.
Apparently, it wasn't there the first day I took pictures, as there's no sign of it. When there's low light, it seems to be quite tough to see, or just doesn't appear.

I've tried the dust remover, and sensor cleaner (though I'm not sure if it does anything but lift the mirror, inviting us to do the rest?), to no avail.

I've enclosed flash pictures, as it rears its ugly head very obviously with the flash.
Could anyone give me pointers on what to do? Should I just send the camera back?

Thanks for any advice!










I tried making the pics smaller, in order to not clog the post with huge pictures. If you need a better view, please tell me, I'll link some larger ones. And yes, I'm aware the room needs vacuuming

Hi Shine,
And welcome - sure you'll enjoy using your K-x - once you have removed that hair. It is most probably a bit of dust that has got in somehow. And no, the dust removal does not rmove everything.

Have you a rocket-blower? (One with a valve so that you don't blow more dust onto the sensor!) Go into the menu system and you will find how to raise the mirror in order to clean the sensor. Do this with a full charge in the batteries as basically the mirror is lifted and shutter opened, exposing the sensor. You don't want poor batteries letting the mirror down whilst blower nozzle is in the mirror-box cavity. If you look carefully, you may well be able to see the particle of dust and so know where to aim the blower.

If that fails to remove it, you may have to use a slightly more invasive dust-removal system of wiping the filter surface that covers the sensor.

Andy

Any mark in exactly the same place on many frames indicates crap on the sensor. Sometimes the sensor-shaker in the camera fails to dislodge it, and you have to resort to other methods.

1. You can try to blow it out, using a rocket blower (not canned air. since these risk squirting solvents all round the inside of the camera). Some people avoid this method on the grounds that it risks blowing more crap into the camera as well as out of it.

2. You can use an arctic butterfly, which is a brush that is charged electrostatically by spinning, and then is wiped (when no longer spinning!!) over the sensor to remove the dust or in your case hair, the crap then sticking to the brush.

3. You can use one of several wet cleaning systems, such as the solvent/swab approach available here, or Pentax's own kit.


I reckon that if your mark is a hair, it won't be stuck too hard, so the arctic butterfly will work a treat. However, they are expensive, but so are all the solutions.

It's a lot easier than you'd think to do it - don't be tempted to take it to some random shop who will charge you an arm and a leg and won't do a better (or more careful) job than you'll do yourself.

I was quite nervous before using the swab method (having already bought an arctic butterfly which failed) to remove huge amounts of well-stuck-on dust (probably pollen), but it worked quite well after two goes, and it was quite easy in the end. Although the arctic butterfly didn't touch the muck in that pic, I have used it succesfully with the occasional large lump of stuff that isn't stuck too hard. I don't use the rocket blower any more.

Good luck.

Have just seen Chris's link to the sensor muck - have had that in the past when using a non-rocket blower on my old *istD
Andy

Not liquid oxygen!! You'd need much higher pressures or much lower temperatures to keep LOX liquid. And you'd also risk some exciting fires - liquid oxygen is a very strong oxidising agent.

These days, the propellants in aerosol cans are usually volatile hydrocarbons, which will liquefy at room temperature and moderate pressure.

It was so bad I couldn't bear to use the camera until I sorted it.

I think a big wuff of pollen-laden air must have happened just when I changed lenses at some point - the dust on the sensor got really bad almost overnight.

Thanks a lot for the answers guys! Turns out a friends apparently has one of these rocket blower things, so he'll be able to help me out.

thanks again!