Sony Alpha dust remove system is a joke

I changed the lens on my camera about 5 times, when I bought it. Since August of
last year, its had the same lens on it... and there are 4 new dust specs on the
sensor!!!

What a piece of rip-off crap!

wrote:
I changed the lens on my camera about 5 times, when I bought it. Since August of
last year, its had the same lens on it... and there are 4 new dust specs on the
sensor!!!

What a piece of rip-off crap!


I've cleaned mine twice. You still have to clean occasionally. You have
clearly never used another DSLR - 4 specs of dust is about 100 less than
most people get in 8 months of uncleaned use. It has nothing to do with
changing lenses, the shutter is covering the sensor when you do that.
Dust is introduced by zooming lenses - sucking/blowing air forcibly
through the blades of the shutter and all parts of the camera - and is
created by debris from the shutter itself and its lubricants.

David
www.photoclubalpha.com

David Kilpatrick wrote:
wrote:
I changed the lens on my camera about 5 times, when I bought it. Since
August of
last year, its had the same lens on it... and there are 4 new dust
specs on the
sensor!!!

What a piece of rip-off crap!


I've cleaned mine twice. You still have to clean occasionally. You have
clearly never used another DSLR - 4 specs of dust is about 100 less than
most people get in 8 months of uncleaned use. It has nothing to do with
changing lenses, the shutter is covering the sensor when you do that.
Dust is introduced by zooming lenses - sucking/blowing air forcibly
through the blades of the shutter and all parts of the camera - and is
created by debris from the shutter itself and its lubricants.

David
www.photoclubalpha.com



According to the only test that I've seen on effectiveness, the A100
cleaning system was useless.
"The first two cleaning cycles has increased the number of spots on the
sensor, just like we observed in the case of Pentax K10D. After the 25th
cleaning we had exactly the same number of spots as we observed after
the second cleaning. Effectiveness: 0%"

http://pixinfo.com/en/articles/ccd-dust-removal/

frederick wrote:
David Kilpatrick wrote:

wrote:

I changed the lens on my camera about 5 times, when I bought it.
Since August of
last year, its had the same lens on it... and there are 4 new dust
specs on the
sensor!!!

What a piece of rip-off crap!


I've cleaned mine twice. You still have to clean occasionally. You
have clearly never used another DSLR - 4 specs of dust is about 100
less than most people get in 8 months of uncleaned use. It has nothing
to do with changing lenses, the shutter is covering the sensor when
you do that. Dust is introduced by zooming lenses - sucking/blowing
air forcibly through the blades of the shutter and all parts of the
camera - and is created by debris from the shutter itself and its
lubricants.

David
www.photoclubalpha.com




According to the only test that I've seen on effectiveness, the A100
cleaning system was useless.
"The first two cleaning cycles has increased the number of spots on the
sensor, just like we observed in the case of Pentax K10D. After the 25th
cleaning we had exactly the same number of spots as we observed after
the second cleaning. Effectiveness: 0%"

http://pixinfo.com/en/articles/ccd-dust-removal/


Yes, there's a lot of that around. In practice the A100 doesn't pick up
dust, or it removes it, one or the other. It does it rather better than
the Canon 400D (there are more persistent spots on ours and it now needs
cleaning - I have only one spot on the A100 and it's been there for ages
without shifting). The K10D, as delivered by Pentax for test, had loads
of dust from the start and their system did not remove it. The Olympus
cameras we've used have never shown any dust and their system appears to
use a much higher frequency vibration. The Pentax appears to use the
lowest frequency. Canon's system is closer to Olympus than Sony in
frequency but for some reason dust sticks a bit more.

It is possible to tell that the A100 dust removal system does work. You
just have to use it for several months. One day, you will find that a
set of pix has a dust spot or two; the next set will have none. That's
the system working. Then you will find that a persistent spot appears
and is not going away. That's sticky dust of some type it can't shift,
and eventually you have to clean the sensor.

In my experience, if you deliberately expose a sensor to aerial dust -
like the photoEzine test where the user placed the A100 face up, shutter
open, on a city high rise window sill for an hour or something - then
enough of this dust will be pollen or moisture particles to make
anti-dust useless, and cleaning pretty difficult.

The test you quote only involved a short period of shutter opening, but
artificially created dust was put into the air. It looks as if the
cleaning process they were forced to use afterwards permanently marked
the Olympus dust filter, and failed to clean the Canon one, so their
test was enough to put two cameras in need of service department
cleaning. At least the Sony and Pentax examples despite the close
proximity of the cover glass to the sensor ended up more or less clean.
The best test of these systems is just use them normally.

David

David Kilpatrick wrote:

It is possible to tell that the A100 dust removal system does work. You
just have to use it for several months. One day, you will find that a
set of pix has a dust spot or two; the next set will have none. That's
the system working. Then you will find that a persistent spot appears
and is not going away. That's sticky dust of some type it can't shift,
and eventually you have to clean the sensor.

That observation that in a series of frames some will have dust, and
later images may not, might not be the anti-dust system. I've seen that
with my dslr which has no dust removal system, and assume that it was
air movement from the shutter / mirror that shifted it.

wrote:
I changed the le

troll.

On May 12, 8:21 pm, wrote:
I changed the lens on my camera about 5 times, when I bought it. Since August of
last year, its had the same lens on it... and there are 4 new dust specs on the
sensor!!!

What a piece of rip-off crap!


The only one that works is used by Olympus.

RichA wrote:
On May 12, 8:21 pm, wrote:

I changed the lens on my camera about 5 times, when I bought it. Since August of
last year, its had the same lens on it... and there are 4 new dust specs on the
sensor!!!

What a piece of rip-off crap!



The only one that works is used by Olympus.

Hmm. I have a choice of believing RichA or David Kilpatrick.

O, What Will it Be?

frederick wrote:
David Kilpatrick wrote:

It is possible to tell that the A100 dust removal system does work.
You just have to use it for several months. One day, you will find
that a set of pix has a dust spot or two; the next set will have none.
That's the system working. Then you will find that a persistent spot
appears and is not going away. That's sticky dust of some type it
can't shift, and eventually you have to clean the sensor.

That observation that in a series of frames some will have dust, and
later images may not, might not be the anti-dust system. I've seen that
with my dslr which has no dust removal system, and assume that it was
air movement from the shutter / mirror that shifted it.


As I said, you need to use the cameras to find out. If it happens once,
it's chance. If occasional dust spots appear for a switch-on period (a
set of frames) and then disappear, and this happens every now and then,
it's fair to assume that the system has some effect.

I also own Konica Minolta 7D and 5D cameras. These do not have the same
AA filter coating, and they make no claim to use a shake to remove dust.
They do however shake the sensor ('zip' it) on switch on. The frequency
is 60Hz, whereas on the A100, it's 100Hz. They pick up dust more
readily, and do not lose it between shoots the same way. They are still
much less dust prone than our Canon 300D and 400D have been.

David

Alan Browne wrote:
RichA wrote:

On May 12, 8:21 pm, wrote:

I changed the lens on my camera about 5 times, when I bought it.
Since August of
last year, its had the same lens on it... and there are 4 new dust
specs on the
sensor!!!

What a piece of rip-off crap!




The only one that works is used by Olympus.


Hmm. I have a choice of believing RichA or David Kilpatrick.

O, What Will it Be?

Well, he's right in that it works all the time, apparently very
effectively. But - it would be a true disaster if it did not work. What
really makes the Olympus system work is that the anti-dust membrane is
several times further from the CCD surface, relative to the format, than
the other mechanisms. So any very fine dust which does stick is so far
out of focus it is not imaged very crisply even at f22. If real dust was
ever to get behind the membrane in the 4/3rds systems, it would be huge
compared to dust on APS-C which is already pretty big compared to dust
on full frame (of course, it all looks the same size at 100 per cent
view for the same pixel pitch).

The worst camera for dust is the Sigma, 9 10 or 14. We love 'em, but
they are strange and flawed bits of brilliance. One of the flawed
aspects is that dust is imaged so sharply and completely obscures all
the information used for any final image pixels in its path.

Another interesting camera for dust is the Mamiya ZD. We have to clean
the IR filter regularly. The cost of an AA filter is nearly £1,500 and
you are supposed to have to clean that less often because the dust is
not imaged so sharply.

David