How to Prevent & Eliminate Dust on Your DSLR Sensor
Oh no! There is dust on my beautiful sensor!
If you own a DSLR, you've no doubt already experienced the annoying
problem of getting dust on your image sensor. Dust reveals itself as
small dark specks of various shapes in the light-toned areas of your
images--typically the sky. Manufacturers are getting pretty creative at
adding features to solve the dust problem (such as sonic vibrators that
literally shake the dust off the sensor), but it's still an annoying
problem for most DSLR users (especially older cameras without anti-dust
features). If you look in the areas in red circles in this shot of
Merrick Butte (in Monument Valley) you'll see typical dust spots.
Getting
rid of dust spots in Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) is very simple,
using either the healing brush or cloning tool. I prefer to use the
healing brush tool because essentially what this tool does is to copy
the textures and tonal values of the area you're healing "from" to
erase the dust spot. You can use the cloning tool, but you run the risk
of disturbing the tones or textures of the area you're patching and if
not done well, you can create a fix that's worse than the original
problem. And remember, dust never shows up in detailed areas (a grassy
lawn, for example), it only shows up in large blank areas.
The
best way to solve the dust problem is to avoid it in the first place.
Here are several tips you can use for preventing dust getting to your
sensor:
Turn your camera off before changing lenses. The static charge
created by leaving the camera in the "on" position draws dust to the
sensor.
Try to change lenses in a car or building where there is no breeze
or blowing dust. In dusty areas like the desert, I carry an over-sized
zipper bag and changes lenses in the bag.
Always point the camera body down when you have a lens off so that nothing falls on the sensor. (And, of course, always use a body cap when you're storing the camera without a lens mounted.)
Be careful to match up lens-mounting index marks so you're not
"scraping" the lens on the flange which creates metal shavings that
fall onto the sensor.
If you do get dust on the sensor, don't worry too much about
it--it's little more than an annoyance that can be easily fixed in
editing. Using the healing brush to remove dust is very simple and takes only a few seconds. Here's a quick step-by-step:
Select the healing brush tool.
Choose a brush size that is slightly larger than the largest dust spot; the exact size isn't important.
Click (option click on a Mac) on an air next to (but not including) the dust spot to set a "source" area and then move the brush over the dust spot and click again. The spot should disappear. Just follow the same procedure until you eliminate all the dust areas.
Go to your local camera shop and ask for a demonstration on
how to clean the sensor yourself and spend the money to get a good
quality dust removal tool. Most of us are pretty scared to be messing with something as sacred as your camera's sensor (let's face it, ruin the sensor and you've pretty much destroyed the camera), but you can learn to clean the sensor safely--just be sure the person who teaches you is very experienced and is using good-quality tools.
Merrick Butte in Monument Valley, Utah. Notice the dust spots circled in red.
Merrick Butte in Monument Valley, Utah with dust removed.
