I had read that the Canon 20d has issues with dust collecting on it's sensors?. Anyway, I now own one, and the other day I noticed not dust, but 2 small insects...possibly mites(?) when looking through the viewfinder. I immediately phoned my friend/head photographer at the local paper and asked him what I should do. He said to buy a blower and blow them out...some sort of thing you use on babies. (?) I don't know what the f*** he's talking about, but before I screw something up, does anyone have any suggestions on what I should do.
I took a heck of a lot of photos the other day and they all had a dark spot on the image, so I assume it's from the mites.
I appreciate any insight and advice.
Al
I could'nt find a photo of the blower, but here is a drawing i did, this you will find in drugstore or camera store nowaday, there originally for putting medicine up your wazoo, so please don't buy a second hand one
And please DO refer to your instruction manual for the proper way of doing this, many folks just put the camera on BULB and blow air, it make matter worse, your chip is electrically charged and actually attract dust particle in this mode. At least theire not zooplankton, that would be really bad news
Cheers
Duh ! be better if I put the illustration
Viz'art,
Hey man...thanks for the drawing and advice...that was really cool of you.
Cheers
Al
De nada
Be careful about using a blower or canned air on your sensor itself. It's ok to blow dust/mites from your viewfinder but Canon says DO NOT blow air into the lense chamber or you can blow dust onto the sensor chip.
The problem with DSLR's is that it's somewhat akin to having a camera that always has unexposed film in it. You can always blow out your film SLR with canned air when there's no film in the camera. But you can't remove the CCD chip. >:-P
Some cameras (I think the Olympus DSLR?) come with built-in vibrators that supposedly shake dust off your sensor. I don't know if this is the case with the 20D. Canon Authorised camera repair shops will clean off your sensor for you but of course this requires pricey in-store service.
A friend of mine runs a web site with some great information on cleaning digital slr camera sensors. It's located here: http://www.cleaningdigitalcameras.com/
Thanks for all the responses. Still have the bugs/mite thingies in the camera, and spots on the photos, so I'm going to give that site a try...looks like what I was looking for.
