So yesterday I got a second lens for my DSLR, a Nikon 50mm F/1.8. I got this lens for a number of reasons. First, it’s a prime rather than zoom, i.e., it has only one focal length. I wanted to try living with a single focal length for a while; lots of people have recommended this as a good way to get a feel for what different focal lengths can do for you. Second, it’s much “faster”, i.e., it has a wider maximum aperture, than my other lens. Third, I’ve heard extremely good things about it; optically, it’s considered to be very good. Fourth, for a lens it’s dirt cheap, which means that I could squeak it into my budget.

So today I took it out shooting. And I happened to take this picture of some power towers on the ridge line, and I happened to take it at F/22 (minimum aperture) just to see what would happen:

And what happened, I’m afraid, was Dust Bunnies. See those black spots in the sky? The two most noticeable are on the left side. Here’s a close-up, just for smiles:

Can you see them now? What those are, is dust particles on the camera’s sensor. See, the sensor gets electro-statically charged, and that attracts dust. And since you can swap lenses, dust can get in. So you get dust on the sensor. I don’t know if this dust was there when I bought the camera, or whether it moved in afterwards; but I’ve not removed the lens all that often, so I suspect it was there to begin with. It’s just hard to see except against a bright, plain background with a small aperture, and I’ve not taken many pictures like that to date…that came out, anyway (you remember, I had this problem with my lens diaphragm….).

Anyway, so what to do? It’s possible to remove these with the Clone Tool in Photoshop Elements…ugh. I can send the camera in to be cleaned; I gather that it’s not uncommon for new cameras to have dirty sensors, and that Nikon will clean it once for free; after that it’s $40. Plus shipping. Plus two weeks travel time. Ugh. My sources indicate that this will be a recurring problem; it’s something I’m simply going to have to deal with.

There are ways to clean the sensor yourself, and I’ve been looking into those. The best articles I’ve seen have been at The Luminous Landscape, a photography site run by landscape photographer Michael Reichmann. He discusses a couple of methods that I’m going to have to look into, given that my house is a dust magnet.