Dust - AAARGH!

I bought one of Pentax's wonderfully named o-ick1 sensor cleaner kits. A bit expensive for a rubber bung on a lolly stick and some sticky paper but sometimes I take brand loyalty a bit far...

I bought some cheap DigiPads from fleabay for my K100D so i can sell it all nice and clean. Will let you know how they are.

Personally I'd baulk at putting anything cheap near the sensor.

Quite like the thought of an oick though

Another of my hobbies is HiFi, and most of my music is on vinyl. They used to make a "pixall" roller (so called because it was supposed to pick all off the record). It is made from a fairly dense but very compliant rubber. Just the thing.

Large dust particals show up sharp, take the lens off put the flash on take photo of white wall or paper, every dot will show up I found out it was the filter.

Now I am confused.

Did as you suggested and




Yet the spots remain in the same relative position with lenses

Oggy everyone seems to share your feeling but being young and maybe stupid, im convinced ill prove everyone wrong or kill my poor k100d in the process

^ i did the same and it was all white aswell.

You need a lens on, and to use a small aperture. Without a lens on you won't see the dust, as it's sitting on a glass layer in front of the sensor. A small aperture gives sharply defined shadows (the spots of dust you see), a wide aperture blurs these shadows to the extent that you usually don't see them at f/4 or so. Having no lens on is the biggest aperture you can get.

Dan

Don't need flash.

Use a lens and a white sheet of paper in a reasonably well lit and evenly lit place. Use the Dust Alert function for the K20D. For other models (or a better test for the K20D), select manual focus and defocus the lens. Use Av mode at f16 or f22. Set the ISO to 100 or 200. Set EV compensation to about +1. Take a shot, moving the camera if it's a long exposure. View the image at high magnification.

Just to add to iceblinker's post, which is the right procedure to show dust, once you've taken your test shot you can play around with exposure, brightness, contrast in post processing to see the spots more clearly.

thanks for the tip on the giottos rocket blower, wow its a monster, came in a huge box from amazon this morning. has done the trick for me. the spot i had was visible if you took a shot of the sky on the kit lens so easy to test afterwards if it worked. spot on! (or off)

Can't understand all this fuss and moaning about dust! I just take pictures of dust and I never see any errant specks!!

(please don't try to understand my childish humour, it's just a manifestation of insecurity. Someone stole my potty when I was very young. )