This last weekend I got out and shot some photographs. During post processing I saw a number of spots on the images that I had to spot correct. I've been seeing them for a while and have been ready to get my sensor cleaned. I had it cleaned about a year ago at Tempe Camera in Tempe, Arizona.
Apparently I've used the camera enough that it needs to be cleaned again. I haven't actually been shooting a lot this year (since December 2015) due to health reasons so I'm guessing that if I had shot more I may have been at this point a few months ago. I may need the sensor cleaned every 9 months before I pass my tolerance level.
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| Dirty Sensor Nikon D610 + 20mm lens, 20mm, f/10, 1/250s, ISO 100 |
This weekend I noticed that there were a couple of really bad, dark spots near the center of the images. There were a lot of less severe spots in the upper left corner. Note that spots show up more with a smaller aperture (I shot some at f/8 or f/10, not even at f/22).
The spots can easily be fixed in Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. That isn't the issue for me. What I don't like is when there are a lot of spots it can take a while. Yes, you can copy and paste them in Lightroom, and I have done that, but you still should look at all of them to see if they were necessary or if the area that was used as the source works in the images where the spot corrections were pasted. Due to that, I typically don't copy and paste the spot correction because they really should be handled from scratch in each image.
The second, and more important issue to me, is that when you do a spot correction, data is being copied from one area of the image to another. For skies and clouds, I don't mind it as long as the correction blends nicely and doesn't look like an obvious patch.
However, if the correction is on more significant details such as a mountain side, or perhaps a building, the correction means that you are loosing actual data in the image. And depending on where the spots are, you could be loosing critical information such as someones head, text on a sign, or the middle of a waterfall.
Since I'm getting close to going to Yosemite National Park, I wanted to get my sensor cleaned so that I won't have spots in the middle of Bridal Veil falls.
I have read about cleaning sensors but haven't brought myself to try it. For $60 each year I don't have to worry about screwing up my sensor. Instead, I can drop my body off with a fully charged battery, no memory cards, body cap, per their instructions. Their biggest concern is having a fully charged battery since the mirror up won't happen if the battery level is at 50% or less.
Last year the results were great - I had it done before visiting Oregon and Washington and barely had any spot removals required when I processed the images. I'm hoping for the same thing this year when I visit Yosemite!
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