Removing dust spots

Steve M · 15 May 2015 at 12:09

I recently bought a second hand, low shutter count (under 3,000) D7100. Camera is mint and looks new, but has a dirty sensor it seems..

When shooting skies/plain backgounds at f10 and above there are lots of dust spots.. This isn't too much of an issue as don't tend to go as narrow as f10 anyway, but recently I've been shooting night long exposures and the dust spots are very noticeable..

I've been using the spot healing brush tool in Photoshopp CC, but finding some quite difficult to get rid of and most times the brush tool just duplicates the spot on the dark sky, whereas one click of the tool removes the spot instantly on a light blue daytime sky?

Any help or techniques to help me out please?

Steve M · 15 May 2015 at 12:33

Cheers for the replies, but I meant in Photoshop

I have no problems removing them from daytime blue skies, but on dark night time skies the brush tool just duplicates the spot or makes it worse..

I'd be scared of actually cleaning the sensor myself as i'd probably make it worse..

Steve M · 15 May 2015 at 12:46

Raymond Lin said:
In PS.

Clone/heal/spot healing tool.

Yes, as i've said, spot healing tool is duplicating the spots on dark skies/making them worse, but works fine on light skies. Clearly i'm doing it wrong.

Can anyone be more specific on their techniques (hardness of the tool, pen presuure on/off ect).

Thanks.

Steve M · 15 May 2015 at 12:57

{SAS}TB said:
I was hesitant about cleaning the sensor but it was surprisingly quick, and easy

literally 5 minutes of removing the problem will save god knows how long in PS or LR ?

..and it removed all of the spots?

I honestly am the clumsiest most unpractical person ever. I really would end up making it worse.

Steve M · 15 May 2015 at 13:04

hmmmm might have to bite the bullet then...

I've put the mirror up and the sensor 'looks' clean (clearly it isn't though) but theres a lot of dust on the mirror.

Probably a really daft question (this is my first DSLR) but dust on the mirror won't show up on the images will it?

Steve M · 15 May 2015 at 14:13

Cheers. Just ordered a dust blower off the bay.

If that dosn't sort it i'll buy the cleaning kit as listed by {SAS}TB in post 2

Steve M · 15 May 2015 at 14:29

Yep, if the dust blower doesn't sort it, i'll get all the cleaning kit. Cheers.

Steve M · 15 May 2015 at 15:41

I was in shutter priority mode and the aperture was automatically set by the camera. To be fair it wasn't quite dark and was shooting in a city centre, so was brightly lit, hence the camera selecting f10 and smaller.

Steve M · 20 May 2015 at 19:42

So, it all came in the post today. Rocket blower did nothing.

I cleaned the sensor with pec pads + eclipse is all is well. Still 3 little spots but not that bad even at f22 and they are not noticeable at f10.

One thing I did struggle with was streaks and smears on the sensor after the eclipse solution had been on it. Had a tough time getting rid of them. Would smears on the sensor from the solution degrade image quality much?

Anyway, its 99% better than it was before with regards to the dust spots.