Damn it. First time out fault with camera ...
Damn it. First time out fault with camera ...
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nick heppinstall

Original Poster:

9,077 posts

310 months

Friday 9th April 2010
quotequote all
Been out today and taken 600+ Pictures. First time i've used the camera apart from a few pics in the garden.

Nearly all the shots were of flying aircraft and every single shot has these marks. One is pretty evident and the others less so. I've just mailed Jacobs about it with some of the pics showing the problem.

Difficult to see the other marks with the low res image but they are fainter versions of the 'main' mark.

Anyone seen anything like it ? Is is something I can hopefully fix ? Bit gutted really ..

Cheers



Edited by nick heppinstall on Friday 9th April 20:15


Edited by nick heppinstall on Friday 9th April 20:19

Olivero

2,157 posts

239 months

Friday 9th April 2010
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Your camera just needs a good clean. That looks like dust on either the sensor or lens. I would recommend taking it for a clean, not too expensive and will solve the problem.

miniman

30,073 posts

292 months

Friday 9th April 2010
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Looks like dust on the sensor. Is the camera new?

nick heppinstall

Original Poster:

9,077 posts

310 months

Friday 9th April 2010
quotequote all
Yeah brand new ! Purchased 2 weeks ago. Taken about 30 test shots in the garden then put away until today.

miniman

30,073 posts

292 months

Friday 9th April 2010
quotequote all
What make / model?

nick heppinstall

Original Poster:

9,077 posts

310 months

Friday 9th April 2010
quotequote all
It's a Pentax kx. Ive done the cameras self cleaning but it's not made any difference. Could it have come like this from the factory ?

miniman

30,073 posts

292 months

Friday 9th April 2010
quotequote all
Seems a bit st if it has... I would take it back to whence it came and ask them what is wrong with it.

nick heppinstall

Original Poster:

9,077 posts

310 months

Friday 9th April 2010
quotequote all
Yeah .... I've mailed Jacobs. i'll see what they say. It would be nice to have a good consumer experience for once. It seems that just about everything I've purchased recently has a fault of some kind .... <sigh>

Olivero

2,157 posts

239 months

Friday 9th April 2010
quotequote all
Nothing wrong with the camera, where you got it from or what model it is. Dust is easy to remove but should be done by someone who knows what they are doing. Do not try this yourself.

nick heppinstall

Original Poster:

9,077 posts

310 months

Friday 9th April 2010
quotequote all
Thanks Olly. I know what you're saying. I just didnt expect to have 600 images with this problem on a 2 week old camera after at most 5 changes of the lens. And those were performed in the kitchen.

Is this the case with DSLR's. Do you have to have the sensor cleaned every 2 weeks after only shooting a few pics in the house and garden ?

miniman

30,073 posts

292 months

Friday 9th April 2010
quotequote all
Not in my experience, no.

Olivero

2,157 posts

239 months

Friday 9th April 2010
quotequote all
nick heppinstall said:
Thanks Olly. I know what you're saying. I just didnt expect to have 600 images with this problem on a 2 week old camera after at most 5 changes of the lens. And those were performed in the kitchen.

Is this the case with DSLR's. Do you have to have the sensor cleaned every 2 weeks after only shooting a few pics in the house and garden ?
The camera should have been perfectly clean when you bought it but no great problem to get it cleaned. With normal use you might need to get it cleaned once a year.

A very dusty place or if you change lens ofter then it will be more often, but not much.
I only clean a couple of times a year even shooting 200,000 photos a year.

Rob13

9,075 posts

254 months

Saturday 10th April 2010
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Do you guys all have it sent away to be done professionally?

Pvapour

8,981 posts

283 months

Saturday 10th April 2010
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I stick the vac over the open face about 1/2 inch away, not advised but really works well for me hehe

nick heppinstall

Original Poster:

9,077 posts

310 months

Saturday 10th April 2010
quotequote all
Pvapour said:
I stick the vac over the open face about 1/2 inch away, not advised but really works well for me hehe
It's a Dyson. The camera may end up inside it ! Not had an answer from Jacobs yet. I just dont really want to go messing about with the Cam. It's looking like it may have left the factory with the dust and I dont want to write off my guarantee.

nick heppinstall

Original Poster:

9,077 posts

310 months

Saturday 10th April 2010
quotequote all
OK now I'm starting to get a bit annoyed. The Camera arrived on the morning of Saturday March 27th.

I'd been to pick up a new car so arrived home at around 11:50. Had a cuppa and unpacked the camera. Went into the garden and took some pictures.

The picture count on the first picture is 753 mad


LongQ

13,864 posts

263 months

Saturday 10th April 2010
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I can't see the Exif information for you example shot but it would be interesting to know the aperture setting for the shot.

FWIW I was taking some experimental shots yesterday with little interest in the lens settings and noticed a fairly large number of dust spots in the 'blank' sky areas that I had not particularly seen before. (You won't usually see them in typical shots but large plain areas like the sky can make them obvious.)

When I checked the Exif information I found out why I could see them - f28.5 aperture is pretty much bound to show any dust somewhere in the optical chain in front of the sensor. It's also not the best aperture for the lens anyway so I would not normally be anywhere close to that setting, hence not seeing the marks before. My Canon body is set to auto-clean at start up and shut down. It's last (and only) non-auto clean would have been about 18 months ago around the time I bought my Artic Butterfly cleaning device. So that probably about 10,000 activations or a little more. For reference, I'm not especially careful about dust avoidance when changing lenses.

If you are seeing the marks at a much larger aperture - say f8 or maybe f11 - then you may well need a clean. If they are persistent spots (i.e. they don't move after a self cleaning cycle) that is mot great for a new camera but bear in mind that the problem cannot be fully resolved even with a fixed lans camera. Anything with a removable lens system runs a higher risk I'm not sure about Pentax but Canon recognise this and have a special function for capturing Dust Delete Data that can then be used in conjunction with their software to automatically correct dust blemishes. Other software products provide the Spot correction tools for the same purpose but not usually automatically.

From my point of view - if I plan a trip to shoot some planes or similar I will probably give the sensor a clean but for other tyopes of shot I don't feel the need at the moment. Then again having invested in the cleaning tool I sometimes feel that I should be using it just to justify the investment!

Some thoughts, for what they are worth.

If your f-number is big try a shot of the sky at a much smaller f number and see how that looks. (Also, when shooting skies, double check that the spots are not distant, out-of-focus birds!)

nick heppinstall

Original Poster:

9,077 posts

310 months

Saturday 10th April 2010
quotequote all
Thanks. Excellent reply :-) OK I'm learning all the time here. It's visible from around F7 ( just depending on background ) all the way up to F32.

On the F11 to F16 shots they appear as round smudges. This worried me a lot.

I've just had a look at a shot of a Hurrican taken at F32 into a very bright sky and low and behold their are 2 very sharp little specs of dust !

The camera has some kind of test for dust but reports all clear.

I dont want to knacker my camera but how do I get rid of them ? Should I be sending it back as it's new ?


14-7

6,233 posts

221 months

Saturday 10th April 2010
quotequote all
nick heppinstall said:
The picture count on the first picture is 753 mad
Does that mean they've sent you a display model (or second hand/return)?

nick heppinstall

Original Poster:

9,077 posts

310 months

Saturday 10th April 2010
quotequote all
14-7 said:
nick heppinstall said:
The picture count on the first picture is 753 mad
Does that mean they've sent you a display model (or second hand/return)?
I dont know but somethings fishy somewhere and it could account for the dust ? When I ordered the camera their seemed to be some doubt as to stock with the guy on the phone having to go and speak to a Manager.... Could be nothing....

The box wasnt sealed but everything looked new. Their were no finger prints on anything but how can they explain the image count ?

Guess they dont answer mails on a Saturday because I'm still waiting for an explination.