Seeing spots

If you're a photography geek like me and have been reading the notes I put under my rollover photos, you've likely seen this phrase way too many times:
1. Removed sensor dust spots with patch tool.

Yesterday, Estorbo's mom asked, "Do you just live with your dust spots and Photoshop them out all the time? I have two that are driving me around. the. bend."

Time out. Have you all met Estorbo, the beeg, blag, Dominican cad (big, black, Dominican cat)? His blog is too stinkin' funny for words. He writes in his heavily accented native tongue (think Ricky Ricardo). Half the fun of reading about his life dayeen and dayoud is trying to figure out what he is saying. That he looks exactly like Deets and has just as much...ok more...attitude, makes it all the better.

Anyway, back to Estorbo's mom's question. Let's talk about sensor dust spots. If you use a point-and-shoot camera, you may want to just come back tomorrow as you shouldn't have this problem. But if you use a DSLR and change lenses, you can probably relate.

See all the black spots in the photo below? I wish I could tell you they were flies or tiny birds, but they are specks of dust on my camera sensor.


Very ugly. As careful as I am when I change lenses, dust invariably finds its way into the camera and attaches itself to the sensor. The spots are most obvious when using a very small lens opening. The picture above was taken with the aperture set at f/22.

The picture below was taken with a wider aperture – f/11. The spots are less noticeable, but they are still there.



The picture below was taken with the aperture set at f/3.5. Look! No spots!


Most of the time, I prefer photos with a blurry background so that the subject of the image pops out - in geek speak, this is known as a shallow depth of field. Blurry backgrounds are best achieved with the aperture open as far as it will go – f/1.8 or f/3.5 depending on the lens I'm using. This is commonly referred to as "shooting with the lens wide open." When I shoot with the lens wide open, I do not see spots.

But sometimes, like when I'm shooting a landscape with the boys in the foreground and the mountains in the background, I'll want everything to be in focus. In that case, I'll change the aperture to something smaller, like f/11 or f/16. And then the spots come out. And then I have to use Photoshop to get rid of them. And then I'm reminded of how dusty the inside of my camera must be. And then I start chastising myself for not taking care of my camera and the snowball starts rolling down the hill from there. I would need therapy if I always shot at f/11 and above.

My options for dealing with the dust spots are thus:
1. Avoidance: Shoot with the lens wide open at all times.
2. Denial: Shoot with the aperture wherever I damn well please and Photoshop the hell out of the spots.
3. Confrontation: Pack up my camera and ship it off to an authorized Nikon repair facility and let them clean the dust off the sensor. Rumor has it that this is a 3- to 6-week process. Let's see...3 to 6 weeks without a camera...3 to 6 weeks without a blog post. NOT AN OPTION.
4. DIY: My go-to guy for all things camera, Ken Rockwell, advises so strongly against this that I will not even consider trying to clean the sensor myself.
5. Extravagence: Buy a new camera body, then ship the D80 off to Nikon to be cleaned.

Logic says that since so much of my life revolves around photography, I should have a backup camera and I should bite the bullet and go for option 5, but practicality says stick with option 1 and when all else fails,
1. Remove sensor dust spots with patch tool.