184/365: I’ve Struck Oil.

Sigh. Remember the other day I mentioned I had found some sensor dust on my D800. Well, today I got home, where I have the “industrial” size blower and I went to town on the sensor to clean it, and then my worst fears came true. It appears it’s not dust, it may be that sensor oil issue others have found from the manufacturing process (it’s believed the mirror or shutter action flings oil onto the sensor). So tomorrow I’ll have to take steps to get that oil off the sensor.  Seems to be a common problem with Nikon’s pro SLRs so I’ll start with a Visible Dust wet cleaning kit rather than put my camera into Nikon’s service centre in Mississauga. Last time I did that with my D200 it took almost three months to get it back and I’ve got photos to take in the meantime. 

The photo above is a composite from four images. I took the photos in sequence using the stop down and defocus technique for spotting sensor dust in between. I aimed the camera at my white drapes. Other than cropping out a 6 megapixel image out of the 36 megapixel sensor it’s unmodified from the camera. Yay.