Cleaning my Nikon D610 Sensor

Just to be clear, this is NOT a blog about how to clean a sensor yourself. This is what I do to get my sensor cleaned...

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.

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!

Dirty little secret

Okay, it's not much of a secret but it is dirty. My Nikon D610 sensor that is.

I was really dismayed when I returned from my trip to Oregon and Washington and started processing the Nikon pics and found spots on my images.

In this image you can see the spots in the upper left corner area (click on it to open a larger version).

Three Arch Rocks image - spots in upper left corner

I had recently had the sensor cleaned, on 4/2/2015. I have used it a bit since then but hadn't had any spots until processing the pics from this trip. I have been pretty careful about where and when I changed lenses, typically only doing it in the Exploder. There have been a few times that I've done it in the field but I always do it by prepping the lenses (loosening the cap, getting it ready for the swap) and when I have a lens off the body I keep the lens mount facing down to reduce the chances of particles entering the body. I make the swap as quick as possible and finish by putting the cap on the previous lens, if there was one.

I'm pretty sure that whatever is on the sensor is NOT a dust particle but is more likely to be more oil splatter. I say that because it's in the same spot on each picture and I have the sensor cleaner running each time I power off the camera.

I can see I will be returning the camera to Tempe Camera again for another cleaning. I don't mind paying for a cleaning but I was hoping it might only be once or twice per year. At this rate it's about three times per year.

An alternative is to learn how to clean the sensor myself and the next time I start seeing spots, if it's only another 4 months down the road, I may venture into that process.

As an aside to this issue, I had really been thinking of upgrading to the Nikon D810 but this has reduced my enthusiasm for spending about $3,000 on another body when this one has this type of issue. I want to believe that the oil issue with the D600 was actually fixed in the D610 but after these experiences I'm left somewhat skeptical.

Nikon D610 Sensor - Cleaned

In my last post I discussed how it was time to get the sensor of my Nikon D610 cleaned and that I'd report on the outcome. Here it is, as promised...

I took Friday, 4/3/2015 off from work and headed north to stay in the Sedona, Arizona area. Usually you can get a campground spot by doing that as long as you get there about when the 3 National campgrounds open up along the Oak Creek Canyon, State Route 89A. This weekend was close. I don't know if I've never gone camping on Easter weekend, or if I've just never gone to the Sedona area.

When you get off of I-17 at Exit 298 to take State Route 179, you will pass through Village of Oak Creek seven miles before hitting Sedona. Seven miles. I think it took me about an hour to get from Village of Oak through Sedona before hitting State Route 89A. In other words, traffic moved an average of probably 7 to 10 miles per hour. To put it another way, it was not pleasant or fun.

The delay made me too late to get a spot at Manzanita, the southernmost campground. I kept going until I got to Cave Springs at about 12:30PM but they would only let me add my name to a list which would let me get access if I returned at 2:00 PM. And, I was on the second or third page of the list. I had the attendant add my name but wasn't sure if I'd go back.

I continued on to Pine Flats, the northernmost campground. They had one spot and would let me take it so I did. The spot was closely tucked in-between two other spots but it was level and the tent area had been freshly raked. I felt lucky to get it.

Our campsite at Pine Flats, Spot #10, 4/3/2010

I put up the tent and did a few other things although I was again travelling very light. I didn't have a stove or gear for a fire nor did I plan to make one. I had a cooler with 3 beers, some lunch meat, and some apples. I had a loaf of bread, granola, craisins, and jerky. Oh, and a couple of gallons of water. It doesn't take long to make or break camp. I headed back to Sedona thinking I could tolerate the traffic now that I had secured a camp site.

I wanted to scope some picture locations during the day with the intent of returning at dusk to shoot. I'd seen a promising location near the Sedona airport so I checked it out. From the junction of 179 and 89A, you head southwest on 89A towards Cottonwood, turning south on Airport Road at the light.

Since it was mid-day and the sky was mostly clear (and therefore uninteresting) I didn't end up taking any pictures but it looks like would be good at dusk and night. There should be a good amount of city lights below the rock formations and it's a good vantage point.

Red Rocks at Sedona, AZ

I continued along 89A towards Cottonwood and then drove the Red Rock Loop Road, turning south at Sedona Red rock High School. After a couple of turns I found a little turn off with a number of other cars parked there so decided to see what was over the rise. That's where I snapped one of two pictures that were worth spending time post processing.
 
It's still a mid-day shot but I think it's okay. Maybe I think that because I had to move the camera a number of times in order to get the foreground trees to hide the houses that are at the base of the hill. You can't see them in the shot but they're all along the base, ruining the shot unless you hide them. I'm not positive of the rocks but I believe its the formation that the Chapel of the Holy Cross is up against.

I completed the Red Rock Loop Road and it was a nice drive but other than a rabbit I didn't see much else to warrant returning - and the other reason to take the loop is to visit the Red Rock State Park but it was closed at 4:00 PM.

I decided I'd seen enough. The traffic other than Red Rock Loop Road was awful. I ended up driving back to the campground, got there a bit before dark, enough to feed my dog and myself, and we went to bed, giving up on the dusk shots. I was hoping I'd wake up early and get either midnight shots or dawn shots.

I woke up a number of times throughout the night and early morning but it was so cold that I couldn't bring myself to get out from under the sleeping bag. I hadn't really brought a warm jacket and it was about 40F.

San Fransisco Peaks near Flagstaff, AZ

When we did get up, it was after the sun had been up and warmed up the place. We broke camp and headed north on 89A to Flagstaff in order to avoid the Sedona traffic. I drove up to Lowell Observatory but didn't go in because of my dog. I took this shot of the San Fransisco Peaks and their lack of snow pack. Then I headed back to Phoenix after a disappointing photography trip but which was still pleasant on other levels.

I have described the outing because there's not that much to report as far as the sensor cleaning other than I am very happy with the results. Before getting the sensor cleaned I normally had to get rid of maybe 50 or 75 different spots, depending on the aperture and how much sky was included in the shot (and whether or not there were clouds that might have hidden some spots).

Even using the Nikon Capture NX2 Dust Off functionality meant I still had to spend some time. Lightroom was about the same. I really disliked the amount of time required to get rid of the spots (on the other hand, I was very thankful the tools existed to do the clean up).

After the cleaning, when I post processed the pics I had a total of 4 or 5 dust spots per pic that I had to remove. The San Fransisco Peaks pic had 5 spots, all others only had 4. That was amazing and put a grin on my face! It took maybe 5 minutes in post processing per picture or less -mainly less since in Nikon Capture NX2 you can save the edits and then run them on additional pics as a batch. (I did go through that on additional pics but they were just more snapshot type pics of the campground.)

My conclusion is that Tempe Camera did a great job cleaning the sensor for $US65.00. It still had some spots but since I mounted the lenses in the field they could be new dust spots. They were in the center and upper right side of the image. It looks like they cleaned the entire camera and shrink-wrapped it for returning. It was clean inside and out. They returned my exact battery. They don't have you leave a SD card in it so there's no question about that. I recommend their service and will have it done again when I need it. Now I can change my lenses in the field without fear.

 



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!