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How to Spot Dust on Your DSLR Sensor • Landscape Photography
• Wildlife Photography
BY NASIM MANSUROV | 65 COMMENTS
LAST UPDATED ON SEPTEMBER 23, 2018 • Portraiture
• Post-Processing
• Advanced Tutorials
Are you getting frustrated with seeing small dark spots in your images that seem
to show up in every image? If you see them consistently in the same location (the

VISUALIZE
size and darkness of the spots can vary depending on aperture), you are most
likely dealing with dust particles on your camera’s sensor. In this short article, I
will show you a quick and easy way to identify sensor dust when shooting
outdoors.

Table of Contents
1. What is sensor dust?
2. Dust/Dirt on the lens
3. Dust on the camera sensor
4. How to see sensor dust

What is sensor dust?

Yourself as a
If you own a DSLR or mirrorless interchangeable lens camera, you will at some Photography Life Member
point have to deal with sensor dust, whether you like it or not. Dust is a normal
fact of life and it is all around us, even at our homes that we try to keep clean at
all times. The dust lands on both the lens and the camera body, and, due to the REVIEWS
“breathing” mechanism of the lens while zooming in/out and focusing, the small • Camera Reviews
dust particles end up getting sucked into the camera body. All lenses breathe • Lens Reviews

one way or another or else the internal elements would not be able to move for • Other Gear Reviews
• Best Cameras and Lenses
autofocus and zoom functions. If you use more than one lens, the dust might be
able to get into the camera body during the process of changing lenses. PHOTOGRAPHY TUTORIALS

Once the dust is in the camera body, it will either fall on the bottom of the
camera or move around until it lands somewhere. Some dust particles land on
the mirror inside the camera and others might end up getting stuck on the
PHOTOGRAPHY LANDSCAPE
camera sensor. So, as you can see, there are three main areas where dust might BASICS PHOTOGRAPHY
settle in:

1. The camera mirror – when dust ends up being on the camera mirror, you will
not see it in your images, but you will see dust particles when you look
through the viewfinder. This one is just annoying and it can be easily cleaned WILDLIFE MACRO
PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOGRAPHY
either with a small brush or a blower like Giotto’s Rocket Blower.
2. The lens exterior, front and/or its back element – while very small dust
particles will not affect image quality, the larger ones and dirt/grease will
decrease contrast and might even possibly degrade image quality. Always
make sure that both the front and the rear elements are clean and dust/dirt COMPOSITION & BLACK & WHITE
CREATIVITY PHOTOGRAPHY
free.
3. The camera sensor – the worst case scenario, because the dust particles will
show up in every image, especially when stopped down to small apertures
like f/10. Cleaning the camera sensor is not easy and the process requires
special tools that need to be used with extreme care. NIGHT SKY PORTRAIT
PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOGRAPHY

The first one is not a big deal – if you see some dust inside the viewfinder but
you do not see it in your images, do not worry about it too much and only clean
the mirror if it is too annoying for you. The second and third are the ones that can
spoil your images and have a negative effect on affect image quality. Let’s talk STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
about lens dirt first. PHOTOGRAPHY VIDEOS

Dust/Dirt on the lens UNIQUE GIFT IDEAS

How does dust, dirt and grease affect the image that comes out of your camera?
Dust and dirt on the front element will rarely be visible, unless there is too much
of it. Even then, you will not actually see any dots in your image, but rather will
notice that your images are a little “hazy” or “cloudy”, which photographers
simply call “decreased contrast”. If only a part of the front element is affected, for
example an oily finger touched the front element, then you will see something
like this:

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NIKON D700 @ 16mm, ISO 200, 1/200, f/8.0

Note the white area inside the circle – that’s how oil/grease would affect the
image. In many cases, you might see a color shift in addition to decreased
contrast.

What about dust on the rear element? Take a look at the following image:

See that large dark spot on the top of the frame? When I took the shot and
looked at the viewfinder, I immediately knew that the rear element of the lens had
a large dust spec on it, because neither the dust on the front of the lens, nor on
the camera sensor looks anything like the above. I changed lenses in a very dusty
and windy area (not a good thing to do) and something large ended up landing
on the rear lens element before I mounted it on the camera. The result is a large
dark circle in the frame!

Dust on the camera sensor

What about dust on the camera sensor? Dust on the camera sensor can be
quickly identified from the following:

1. The size and visibility of the dust particles will change as you change lens
aperture. At maximum apertures on fast lenses such as Nikon 50mm f/1.4G,
you might not even notice the dust particles in your images, which does not
mean that they are not there. They will only be visible at smaller apertures
such as f/4.0-f/5.6 and higher. As you increase aperture to a larger number,
the dust will appear darker and more pronounced and the size of it will also
get a little smaller.
2. Dust particles will always appear in the same spots.
3. Sensor dust can never be seen through the viewfinder, it only shows up in
images. Even then, you might need to zoom in to 100% to see it. Larger dust
particles and hair can be visible right away without having to zoom in (see
example image below).

Here is an example of sensor dust:

Those three sensor dust specks ended up being on my sensor after a long day of
driving through a very dusty area. As you can see, the dots are quite obvious and
are much smaller than the earlier example of dust on the rear lens element. I
used a small aperture of f/10 for this shot to get the bird in perfect focus, so the
dust specks showed up right away.

How to see sensor dust

If your camera has dust on its sensor, you can quickly spot it by doing the
following:

1. Set your camera on Aperture Priority Mode.

2. Set your metering mode to Matrix/Evaluative Metering.
3. Set your camera ISO to the lowest number such as ISO 100 or 200.
4. Turn off Auto ISO.
5. Turn off autofocus and set your lens on manual focus.
6. Set your aperture to the largest number available for your lens by rotating the
camera dial. For example, the minimum aperture on the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G is
f/16, so if I were shooting with this lens, I would set my aperture to f/16.
7. If you are outside, point your camera up at the clear blue sky and take a
picture. If you are indoors, find plain white paper, zoom in all the way so that
the paper fits the whole frame, then make sure that the lens is completely
out of focus and take a picture. If you are in front of a computer, open up a
text editor such as Notepad, maximize it to the screen and then get as close
to the monitor as possible so that only the white color is visible in the frame.
Make sure that your focus is way off (completely out of focus) – that way
only dust particles will be visible.
8. Zoom in on the image (rear camera LCD), scroll from left to right and top to
bottom all over the image and see if you can find any dark spots.
9. If you cannot see any, your sensor is clean. If you see dark spots like in the
above example, then your sensor has dust on it.

Here is a shot of the sky that I took at f/16 after seeing dust in my image:

NIKON D3S @ 24mm, ISO 200, 1/40, f/16.0

The large dark circle is dust on the rear element of the lens, while the dots and
hair are both on the camera sensor. As you can probably tell, I had to do some
cleaning of the sensor after I saw the above. I obviously did not do it on location,
but in a dust-free environment as soon as I got back home.

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FILED UNDER: CAMERAS AND LENSES

TAGGED WITH: DSLR CAMERA, SENSOR DUST, TIPS FOR BEGINNERS

About Nasim Mansurov

Nasim Mansurov is the author and founder of Photography Life,
based out of Denver, Colorado. He is recognized as one of the
leading educators in the photography industry, conducting workshops,
producing educational videos and frequently writing content for Photography
Life. You can follow him on Instagram and Facebook. Read more about Nasim
here.

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65 COMMENTS Newest

RossRoberts
November 14, 2018 12:51 pm

Thankyou for the very helpful tutorial!! I was frustrated, but this helped me identify and clean
dust off my camera’s imager.

Thanks a TON!!

1 Reply

BachoGap
July 27, 2018 3:55 pm

I made a choice on used Canon 6D and going to test it carefully. After short researches I
found your articles and will be very useful. Thanks and I’ll be following !

0 Reply

Marek
February 20, 2018 1:46 pm

When the dust spec is in the top right corner on the photo, which corner of the matrix is that
when looking straight at it?
Just want to know where to focus my little blower.

1 Reply

Dimitrios Tsagdis
January 31, 2018 10:13 am

Tnx for you useful advice and demonstrating the gel lens cleaner. I tried what you suggested
to take a test shot of my sensor at f/36 in both my bodies using different lenses. My Canon
7DMII (which I had for a couple of years doesn’t have a single spot) which made me proud
but I do not use it very often and usually stays with one lens attached (the 100-400 II) most
of the time and my 6D which I had for 4 years and when I use I change lenses all the time
only had a couple of tiny spots which I’m also very happy about (I thought it would be far
worst) and under normal shooting I never noticed them. When I visually inspect my 6D
sensor, even with a magnifying glass and a head lamp I cannot identify these two tiny spots
on my sensor. My question when I look at the photo with the spots at the LCD back of my
camera the spots appear to be on the left hand side towards the edge and half way through
in terms of height. When I visually inspect my sensor at the front should I expect to find
these spots at the same coordinates or is the sensor their reverse or upside down or
something along these lines. So for example what I see in the picture at the back as left
when I look at the sensor at the front is right or left? Ditto for up down.

1 Reply

Ed
October 3, 2017 6:22 am

Hi
I have an iPhone 5 that had a broken screen which allowed dust to get inside. And this
caused the front camera to become foggy. So I replaced the screen which includes a new
selfie camera but then noticed a dust speck on the main camera images that enlarges with
zoom. I tried to clean the lens with an air can and it seems to me that I’ve made it slightly
bigger. After reading your article I pointed the camera right next to a white wall, out of focus,
and the speck is still there in focus. I’m pretty sure that this dust was not there before my
interventions. I could replace the camera (only 12€) but it’s a 1 hour job by disassembling just
about the entire phone. If I blew dust onto the sensor can I remove it by blowing more air ?

0 Reply

GeeDee
September 26, 2017 1:54 pm

I am getting a particular part as distorted. does this need repair or I can fix it at my own?

0 Reply

Nibiru Planet X World News

June 23, 2017 11:24 am

Hi there is it possible i can have permission to use these images to make a video on youtube
?

0 Reply

PSchneider
June 1, 2017 2:32 pm

GREAT article with helpful examples.

0 Reply

David Dube
November 27, 2016 2:03 pm

Oops, looks like the Beaver hut is gone at Maroon Bells.

0 Reply

Kandu
August 7, 2016 2:32 am

Thank you for great information

0 Reply

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