Hoverflies and spiders

mjmountain

mjmountain

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mjmountain said:
As always please view original Flickr for full glorious detail. The thumbs don't do them credit.[/QUOTE]

Very true. Plenty of detail when seen over at Flickr. Nice.

Are you generally cropping or using them as they come out of the camera?

I think you have some dust on your sensor, very visible in #3, #4 and #9.
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mjmountain said:
Cropping for the spiders, hoveflies cropped a little bit. Yeah I noticed the dust too. Hope the auto sensor clean works
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You can test that by capturing images of a plain surface or the sky at f/22 (or smaller if available). Best to use manual focus and throw the image out of focus; that will make stuff on the sensor show up most clearly.
 
mjmountain said:
Cropping for the spiders, hoveflies cropped a little bit.
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Maybe allow a little more space around the subject for shots where you want to more or less fill the frame with the subject? That will help avoid accidental crops and will help with DoF; it is difficult to get great DoF coverage of a subject that fills the frame, even side on. The detail will still show up fine after a modest crop. (I have a great temptation to go in close and fill the frame, but I should know better because generally I find I prefer shots of the same subject which were taken from further out and then cropped.)
 
GardenersHelper said:
Yes, blower first. Then if that doesn't work, vacuum packed swabs. (This sort of thing.) If that doesn't work, a couple of drops of a suitable cleaning fluid on one of those swabs. (This sort of thing.)
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I think the A77 has in body image stabilisation. My G80 has that and I felt it better to do the cleaning with the camera on so the sensor was held rigid rather than moving around while I was trying to clean it. You might want to google that to see what people recommend about how to do it with Sony cameras.
 
mjmountain said:
Ballpark cost for a service?
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Jessops wanted £30 for a 48-hour turnaround sensor clean, £50 for a one hour turnaround. A repair shop in Bristol wanted £36 for a two hour turnaround sensor clean. But is @ChrisA thinking of something more involved than a sensor clean?

Background/Off topic

I had a spot I couldn't get rid of on my G80. I went for the fast turnaround at Jessops but wasn't impressed by what he did, just poking around with a Lenspen like this which had been used many times before. He couldn't get rid of the spot (so I wasn't charged) but when I got home I discovered that he had added a lot more.

When I found the extra dust spots I rang Jessops and asked "So what do I do now". They recommended a repair shop in Bristol so I took it in there, having cleaned off the rest of the dust Jessops had added to the sensor. However, when I showed the repair shop man an image of the original spot he wouldn't touch the camera. The spot was much smaller and darker than the dust spots I usually see. He reckoned it was "behind the glass" on the sensor and if that was the case it would need a new sensor. The camera has now gone in for repair.

While the G80 is away I'll be using my G5. I've discovered that that has two spots that I can't get rid of. I had loads of problems with spots on my 70D sensor; I think I've got it clean now. When I get the G80 back I'm intending to put my 45-175 lens on it and leave it there. And I'm very inclined to not change lenses on my 70D, just leaving the 55-250 on it.

My bridge cameras obviously have their shortcomings, but this dust issue isn't one of them.
 
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How do you clean the sensor on a Sonly SLT camera the mirror does not move as I recall?
 
Nice set of shots Mike
I would suggest reducing the highlights and upping the shadows when processing from RAW the adlust the contrast. For me the bee especially needs the highlights rediced or reduce the exposure and lift the shadows/
 
mjmountain said:
There's a button that flips it up out the way.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekan8ZZnObo


Local camera shop have quoted me £50 to clean, that feels very expensive to me? (Given how easy it is in the video).
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The basic principle is easy. I have found that in practice it can be more complicated.

A brush may not pick up (all) the dust spots.

It is difficult to brush along the edges of the sensor without going over the edge and possibly dragging dust on to the sensor. Notice also that in the video he did three strokes with the brush. Two may be ok, turning the brush over after the first one, as he did on the video. But a third stroke seems iffy to me. If the brush has picked up dust from the sensor with an earlier pass the third pass may put it back again (quite apart from any dust picked up from beyond the edge of the sensor). And I imagine the first two strokes could discharge the static charge on the hairs, which would make any picked-up dust more likely to be redeposited I would have thought. (Perhaps even just the first stroke discharge it? Don't know.)

I have one of those brushes. It didn't work well for me. I have a battery driven version that spins the brush around before you use it so as to put a static charge on the brush hairs, and LED lights built into it to make it easier to see what you are doing. That didn't work well for me either. In fact it made things considerably worse on at least one occasion, presumably by dragging stuff in from beyond the sensor.

I have swabs (those that I linked to) and cleaning fluid (the sort I linked to). I have had most success with the swabs, but even there I find it can take a number of attempts to get the sensor fully clean. This is partly because some spots are difficult to budge, and partly because of additional spots turning up.

At £50 a throw though, it might be something worth learning to do for yourself. But there is @ChrisA point about the IBIS. I'd look into that before trying it yourself, if you do decide to go down the do-it-yourself route.

Sorry to be negative. I have read plenty of comments on forums and at Amazon from people who have used one or other method to their complete satisfaction, with very little bother. So perhaps it is just me. But I have had a lot of trouble in this area, both with getting dust on sensors and trying to get rid of it. It may be partly because I use such small apertures, and that is worst case for making spots on the sensor show up in images.
 
GardenersHelper said:
The basic principle is easy. I have found that in practice it can be more complicated.

A brush may not pick up (all) the dust spots.

It is difficult to brush along the edges of the sensor without going over the edge and possibly dragging dust on to the sensor. Notice also that in the video he did three strokes with the brush. Two may be ok, turning the brush over after the first one, as he did on the video. But a third stroke seems iffy to me. If the brush has picked up dust from the sensor with an earlier pass the third pass may put it back again (quite apart from any dust picked up from beyond the edge of the sensor). And I imagine the first two strokes could discharge the static charge on the hairs, which would make any picked-up dust more likely to be redeposited I would have thought. (Perhaps even just the first stroke discharge it? Don't know.)

I have one of those brushes. It didn't work well for me. I have a battery driven version that spins the brush around before you use it so as to put a static charge on the brush hairs, and LED lights built into it to make it easier to see what you are doing. That didn't work well for me either. In fact it made things considerably worse on at least one occasion, presumably by dragging stuff in from beyond the sensor.

I have swabs (those that I linked to) and cleaning fluid (the sort I linked to). I have had most success with the swabs, but even there I find it can take a number of attempts to get the sensor fully clean. This is partly because some spots are difficult to budge, and partly because of additional spots turning up.

At £50 a throw though, it might be something worth learning to do for yourself. But there is @ChrisA point about the IBIS. I'd look into that before trying it yourself, if you do decide to go down the do-it-yourself route.

Sorry to be negative. I have read plenty of comments on forums and at Amazon from people who have used one or other method to their complete satisfaction, with very little bother. So perhaps it is just me. But I have had a lot of trouble in this area, both with getting dust on sensors and trying to get rid of it. It may be partly because I use such small apertures, and that is worst case for making spots on the sensor show up in images.
Click to expand...


Well here's hoping the blower sorts it out. The in built sensor shake isn't shifting it. BTW. Any chance this could be on the mirror and not on the sensor?
 
mjmountain said:
Well here's hoping the blower sorts it out. The in built sensor shake isn't shifting it. BTW. Any chance this could be on the mirror and not on the sensor?
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Don't know. I would have thought the mirror was too far away from the sensor for the spot to appear that well-defined, but I'm guessing. Use the blower on the mirror first I suppose and see if that does the trick. If not, then try using it on the sensor.
 
@£50 a pop this is something I need to learn how to do myself, however would prefer to do it with someone who know's what they're doing the first time. Google reveals a mix of "it's a doddle" to "ruined my camera".

Fingers very firmly crossed that the blower does the trick.
 
Lovely shots and that Hoverfly in the 1st post is super, I guess that using f14 over f9 ish has helped your shots improve ?
Compare your shots from 2 weeks back to now and see the difference, what an improvement :banana:
 
Graham said:
Lovely shots and that Hoverfly in the 1st post is super, I guess that using f14 over f9 ish has helped your shots improve ?
Compare your shots from 2 weeks back to now and see the difference, what an improvement :banana:
Click to expand...

Thanks - yes, think I've found my sweetspot - switched from Aperture priority to manual, which has helped a lot. Now I basically tweak the ISO depending on the light from between 250 - 500 and it seems to cover most scenarios whilst allowing me to keep the shutter speed fast and the DOF decent. I need to move my flash off camera so it gives me more options but for now it'll do.
 
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