Strange mark on images

[dougan]

Took my OM-D10 out today for only the 4th time. It had the 14-42 Olympus EZ attached.
There is a circular mark in the upper centre of the images clearly seen against the blue skies.
Cannot see anything obvious on the lens.

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Any ideas of what they could be?

 

[bredman]

It's something on the sensor.

 

[dougan]

Surprised to have something on the sensor with such little use.
Will it be easy to remove?

 

[eteless]

it's dust, the spec is probably 0.1mm big, I doubt you can see it with your eyes. Turn the Camera off and on a dozen or so times and see if the sensor shaker will get rid of it, if that doesn't work try a bulb to blow air.

 

[dougan]

Many thanks for the advice

 

[eteless]

If you need to blow air make sure the camera is facing downwards and blow air up inside it.

It's sort of hard to get a sensor perfectly clean... you probably don't want to see a picture of a while wall taken with mine...

 

[tkbslc]

Rocket blower is an essential accessory for these cameras, I'm afraid.

 

[eteless]

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Actually, this body wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be. (taken at f/22)

 

[b_rubenstein]

That's not dust on the sensor. Some sort of liquid residue. Dust is much smaller and darker.

 

[rmcnelly]

Could it be in the lens?

 

[Growltiger]

Looks like dust to me.

 

[Chris5107]

UFO

unidentified fouling object

 

[Jfrader]

It's dust or dirt. The image of dust will vary from hard-edged to faint and amorphous depending on the f-stop used. It typically becomes a problem when proper care is not taken in changing lenses. Unfortunately, Olympus discourages user wet-cleaning of sensors so the air bulb and internal dust shaker are the only realistic options.

The spot on the image is easily removed in post-processing using Content Aware Healing but it gets to be a pain to have to fix every image, especially if you have several spots.

 

[Amin]

Dust

 

[fsuscotphoto]

That second one is nasty. I would be very concerned if it were me, but I over react to dirt on my equipment.

 

[dougan]

I have only changed lenses a couple of times, just unlucky I guess!

 

[Growltiger]

Make sure you use a genuine Rocket blower not a cheaper copy. I bought one that looked the same and the first puff sent 1000 black particles from the inside of the blower onto the sensor.

 

[Ross the fiddler]

The way to see any dust spots, "dust bunnies", is to close the aperture down to f22 taking a photo of a plain, bright area (sky or brightly lit plain wall but out of focus would probably be better) & that is the worse case scenario for showing any particles on the sensor (or more correctly, sensor filter stack) as large apertures (f1.8) it may not be particularly noticeable.

Make sure you use a genuine Rocket blower not a cheaper copy. I bought one that looked the same and the first puff sent 1000 black particles from the inside of the blower onto the sensor.

That is certainly something to be very wary of, thanks.

 

[DaveEP]

Looks like dust to me. Just don't shoot at f22 (or anything above f8 or f11) and most people will never see a dust problem. Almost every camera will exhibit some problems at f22 unless it's just been cleaned.

There really is no benefit to shooting at f22 on M43. While many people think that it will give you more DOF, all it really does is rob you of details and make the image worse!

I did an aperture comparison on several lenses to see how sharpness falls off as the aperture increases (scroll down the pages to see the 100% crops):

Olympus 12mm Review
Olympus 45mm Review
Lumix 7-14mm Review
Lumix 14mm f2.6 Review
Lumix 14-140mm Review

As you can see, it's not just one lens, it's actually all of them. I rarely shoot above f8 on M43 because of diffraction.

 

[eteless]

There really is no benefit to shooting at f22 on M43. While many people think that it will give you more DOF, all it really does is rob you of details and make the image worse!

As you can see, it's not just one lens, it's actually all of them. I rarely shoot above f8 on M43 because of diffraction.

If you need DoF you need DoF, it's hard to get around unless you use a composite image. The blur caused by diffraction is easily countered by sharpening as it is a global effect, having things so out of focus that you cannot tell what they are can't be changed in post.