[Erictator]

At a frame count pushing 8800 clicks, I smugly thought I was somehow lucky or immune to sensor dust, then a week ago I took an F22 shot of our suspension bridge half way up covered in bright morning fog... OMG! The dust bunnies and black peppered spots of death were everywhere! (well, 3 dark black ones in the top right, about a half dozen gray halo'd ones middle to left top, and some 10 or so very faint round dust blobs) I took several shots, and it made cleaning up in post a royal PITA!

I already have a rocket blower, gave it several puffs, the faint round dust blobs went away, but no-go on the halo'd or stubborn darker spots, I have a feeling humidity welded those on already)

Ordered a FF anti static brush, a swab kit and sensor safe (claimed) wet solution, and a digital 7X LED lit loupe.

Stuff should be here in a couple of days. Sigh...
Wish me luck!

[GeneV]

I rest my case.

Yep. You have to hunt them down and get them where they live.

[Erictator]

OK, cleaning supplies arrived today. Yay! I can take clean pictures this weekend.

So first I looked with the LED lit loop. (Movo LCT7X SLR Sensor Loupe on Amazon) Yup, there be spots, and I can see the buggers now!

First I tried the "Full Frame sensor 24mm anti static brush", (same source) then followed with the giatto blower. Took a snap, pretty good, but darkest spots remained.

The other thing I bought was a wet or dry swab kit with a dozen FF sensor swabs with a sensor safe, non-alcohol solution. (UES Full Frame (CCD/CMOS) Digital Camera Sensor Cleaning Swab DDR-24 Type 3 Kit, same source)

I put 2 drops, one on each side of the swab, waited a few seconds for it to soak in, and swiped the sensor once with each side of the swab.

I was tempted to finish it off with the Giatto blower again but decided to leave it and look with the loop. Looked perfect!

Took a quick pic (I've been just using my soft box light tent interior as a target @ f22 with my FA 50mm 1.4) and scrolled around at 100%. Perfect! About time!

Thanks to the posters here on the forum who gave me the confidence to do this and not worry too much about doing damage as long as I was reasonably careful.
Y'all are the best!
Eric

[todd]

When blower doesn't work I use an LED lighted sensor Loupe to highlight the blob and Pentax O-ICK1 stick to remove it.

Further up in the thread I reported that swabs didn't do much good for me at removing junk from my sensor. About half way through the box of swabs, using the one wet swab (cleaning fluid) then one dry swab method, I finally got rid of the original problem area, but it immediately morphed into new stuck streaks or lines of junk showing up under the loupe that I wasn't able to remove with the second half of the box of swabs (I have three swabs left)...

So I ordered the O-ICK1 which arrived yesterday and gave it my first try a bit ago. The pesky streaks of junk do not look to be coming off. I stopped trying after a bit because I noticed there are bits of junk stuck on the bottom of the gel stick that the cleaning paper is not removing from the gel surface. The good news is that this must have come from my sensor (or at least I certainly hope so!), but now what? Have you ran into this problem before? They look like white specs that I can see with my naked eye... Couldn't find anything in the manual of what to do in this case. Any recommendations?

[monochrome]

@todd I've never had that problem, but if it is affecting your images I'd consider professional cleaning - even Precision if it comes to that

[todd]

@todd I've never had that problem, but if it is affecting your images I'd consider professional cleaning - even Precision if it comes to that

Maybe I am not using the right cleaning paper. I was trying to clean with the very top piece of the pad. Now I am looking at the manual again and it says 'lift the cover'. Is that very top piece the 'cover'? The pieces underneath look the same as the top piece though... No stupid questions, right!?

And how do you know when a particular sheet shouldn't be used anymore? Doesn't seem like it's very visible (on the top piece at least...)...

[niceshot]

Todd if you try the swab method again ,first use the blower the swab it wet and follow with a dry one immediately there after. Then use the blower again followed by the stick/ Only dab with the stick. Good Luck

[monochrome]

IIRC the top piece is the cover. Use the same pattern gently touching the paper you use gently touching the sensor. Discard the used piece of paper after each cleaning session.

In your case it sounds like you smeared the Schmitz (sticky pollen) across your sensor. I've always had a blob of house dust to remove.