Spring Cleaning for the Nikon D610

I decided to try having my D610 cleaned. I've grown tired of trying to clean all of the dust spots off at post processing time. I often will use the feature in Nikon Capture NX2 software that automatically detects and corrects for dust spots (using a dust off reference image) but it doesn't always do the job satisfactorily. It does pretty good but I think it may be lens dependent if not aperture dependent.

Capture NX2 often times will partially correct a dust spot but not completely, meaning I still have to manually correct those. I think it does take care of a lot of them and I think if you're using a larger aperture the dust spots are less noticeable anyway and I think that's when Capture NX2 can really save some time.

Note: I refer to larger apertures where the opening size is larger, such as f/4, compared to smaller apertures where the opening is smaller such as f/20. I know a lot of people think of a bigger aperture when they see a bigger "number", but apertures are ratios or fractions defined as the focal length (f) divided by a number. Any number divided by 4 is a bigger result than the same number divided by 20. 1/4 is bigger than 1/20.

In Lightroom I can clean one image and then copy and past the cleaning to other images, which also saves some time but still I have to go through and at least look at the images where I've pasted the corrections. Sometimes they don't do a great job, other times there are additional spots showing up that need to be cleaned, and sometimes there are corrections I don't want such as on a hill side (where the original image had sky and showed the dust spot more clearly.

My time spent cleaning dust spots has gotten to the point that it bothers me enough to try to do something about it. I contacted one of our main camera stores in the Phoenix area, Tempe Camera, and they said to make sure that having it cleaned would NOT violate the warranty. So, since this is a refurbished camera and I got an aftermarket New Leaf warranty from Adorama, I contacted New Leaf and they said that they consider the cleaning to be maintenance and any issues would be covered. I hope they still feel that way when I get the camera back if there are any issues!

Home from the Cleaners

I picked up the camera from Tempe Camera on 4/2/2015. I talked to the person that actually cleaned the camera - he said there was one really good (and by that, he meant bad) spot on the sensor. He said it was like a bug on a windshield. We talked about how you can help prevent the sensor getting dirty by not changing lenses in dirty environments, and I told him I have a friend who avoids changing lenses as much as possible and really wants a single, do-it-all lens (like a 18-300mm) because he can avoid changing lenses.

I then told the technician that I'm kind of the other way. I bought a camera to take pictures. I bought different lenses to provide better quality at their focal lengths. I'll change from one lens to the other in order to use the lens that I think is the best for a given picture. Now that I know I can get the sensor cleaned for $US65, I can afford that once a year or more as necessary and I'll get to use my different lenses.

I received the camera with shrink wrap around it. I joked to myself that they'd wrapped it to keep the bad spots from infecting other cameras. When I unwrapped it, it looked like they also cleaned the exterior of the camera.

I haven't taken a picture with it yet, but when I do and if it is spot free, I'll be a happy camper!