April 18, 2019

You see that black or grey dot?

Zoom in a bit.  The black dot.  It is dirt.

This mean your camera is dirty.  Either your lens is dirty or your sensor has dust on it.

First thing you do, is to clean your lens.  You can use microfibre, with the alcohol lens wipe to clean it.  Use the blower to blow the other side of the lens and try to verify if the dirt has gone away.

So, run a blank white screen on your computer, or iPad.

Set the Aperture to F22 and make the rest Auto.  So, you are in Aperture priority mode.

Take the white screen.

Transfer the white screen picture you have just taken into your Photo app.

And see it on the screen.  Wow, so many black or grey dots.

That is dirts.

So, the auto sensor not doing a good job ya.  But I have not clean my sensor since long time ago.  And most of the time I change the lenses outdoor, no doubt there will be few dirts inside the sensor area.

The black dots in the middle is very obvious.  So, I decide to remove it.

You must do it in a very clean room.  A no dust room.

Remove the lens.

Examine the sensor (the green rectangular area).

You can see a few micro-dust on the sensor itself.

Do NOT use any microfibre cloth or tissue or anything to clean it.

Oriented the camera with the sensor facing down.  Take the blower to blow as many time as possible.  Blow with few angles.  Blow until you satisfy.

Re-attach the lens.  Take a photo of the white screen again.

OK, there are still a few grey dots here and there.  But the big black dot is gone.  That is the good sign.

Take the blower and blow again.

And finally, looks clean.

Yup, it is clean.

So, this is part 1.  This is the very easy method to find out if your camera sensor and lens got dirts or not.  Using the blower you blower the dust off by force.

I will be doing the Part 2 in few weeks time.  Because, although it looks clean, tehre are some very very faint grey dots and area if you look closely.  And I start to think that it is a persistent dirts that “stick” onto the sensor.  Even the blower are not strong to remove it.  So, I am waiting for Amazon to deliver my APS-C sensor cleaning swipe kit.  Once it come, I will do the cleaning.

Ah, take note.  This is done on a Mirrorless camera.  If you have a DSLR, you might want to consult your manual, as sometimes you might need to park your mirror from your camera menu.