Sensor cleaning

The original image

The heart of a digital camera is its sensor. With an SLR, changing lenses opens the body of the camera to the surrounding environment, and dust can enter. Then, when taking a picture, the mirror flaps up and down and some of that dust can fly behind the mirror onto the sensor. When this happens, every frame you take will have a blotch on it. It might be black, or it might be a bit fuzzy. When you start noticing spots in the same place on all your images, it's time to clean your sensor.

I've owned my Nikon D80 SLR for about 4 years. I bought it in Northampton, MA, on a stop we made there in 2008. I used it through all our travels up to and back from Alaska. The amount of dust and the number of lens changes left some serious dirt on my sensor, and I took it to a camera shop in Phoenix when we camped nearby to get it professionally cleaned. The guy in the shop said that it was one of the worst he had seen.

Now, about 2 years later, I'm seeing some slight blurry spots appearing on the sensor. This perhaps due to the salt air and dusty roads on Jekyll Island, where we've spent the winter. This time, getting a cleaning will be more difficult. We have no stops planned near a city where there might be a camera shop capable of doing this. I may have to ship the camera body to a place that can do it.

Two round blotches in the upper right sky

I have explored doing the cleaning myself. This must be handled delicately, as any damage to the sensor will destroy the camera. And there can be no residue left on the sensor when the job is done. Adorama and other vendors sell a bunch of different cleaning kits for doing this job, with prices from $20-$50. I'm thinking that having one of these in my bag is not such a bad idea, since traveling can make getting it done difficult.

Why shoot raw?

The award winning image

One of the ribbon winning images that I entered into this year's competition on Jekyll Island was taken several years ago with a point and shoot camera. As I prepared the image for printing, I wished that I had captured the image as raw. Here's why.

Serious photographers have already figured this out, so if you're serious, stop reading this and go take some pictures. One or two of you might just be coming up to speed, so this is addressed to you.

Most cameras produce JPEG compressed images, which have been processed, white balance adjusted, color balanced and sharpened to provide what should be the average pleasing result, and they do a pretty darn good job. Some cameras, notably SLRs and some point-and-shoots can deliver raw images as well.

Inside the camera, the data is collected from the sensor, and that data from the sensor is what we call raw. The key element in a more expensive camera is often the quality of the sensor. Good sensors deliver more data per pixel in a raw image than can be stored in a JPEG compressed image. Yet the best sensors cannot compete with the visual capabilities of the human eye.

The original JPEG image

So the first, hopefully obvious point is that the raw image is not processed and balanced to some average. You get to do that yourself on the computer when you load the image into Photoshop, Lightroom, iPhoto or Aperture, or perhaps some software that came with your camera.

Well, if you're like me, when you start doing this you ask, "OK, now what? I've got all these controls, and I have no idea in which direction to go!" Yep, it can be overwhelming, and the names on all those sliders don't necessarily mean much to the uninitiated.

But control s the whole point. Because when the processor in the camera does the work for you, you have lost most of the ability to control. And very often, it is the nuance in the image that can make the difference. In fact, many times we want to exaggerate the nuance. For some people, exaggerating the nuance is a key element of their photographic style.

So by using raw images, you are able to make fine adjustments of the image, getting away from the "good average" spin that the camera processor would put on the image.

Finally, because there is more data in the raw image than a JPEG compressed image, it is possible to reveal parts of the image that the processor in the camera ignores. One example of this is the number of bits in the digital data. We generally think that 8 bits each of red, blue and green is sufficient to produce an image. They eye can discriminate at least 9 and perhaps more bits in adjacent patches, and our vision system can sense perhaps 16 bits in a scene.

So if you're deciding whether to shoot raw or not, first decide whether the JPEG images that you get are sufficient for your needs. In most cases they are. But if you find something lacking, then capturing more data and sorting through it may well be a worthwhile effort.

What was it in that prize winning image that I discovered that made me wish it was raw? It was the detail in the dark, shadowy parts of the image, especially in the rafters in the roof. By using raw processing in Lightroom on this JPEG image, I was able to reveal some of that detail that was otherwise invisible. That detail balanced the composition, and the judges thought so, too. But the depth of control, and the amount of detail was necessarily limited by what I had available in the JPEG image. If I had a raw image to work with, this might have been a second place image instead of a third place image.

Renewing the photo blog

It seems that despite my efforts to be a photographer, I keep returning to writing to satisfy some unfulfilled urge in my soul. Taking good photographs is exciting for me (taking great ones is more earth shattering...) and I'll continue to work at that. But then, I want to share the work with... whoever. Thus I'll start contributing to this blog again.

During the past 4 months while we have been living on Jekyll Island, I've had the urge to provoke some income with photos. This challenged me to create opportunities. Along the way, I learned a lot.

The campground residents tend to be thrifty, and they live significant parts of the year in homes that have zero wall space. These facts suggest that the hard sell wouldn't work, nor would lavishly framed wall art. I would have to find ways to expose my attractive photos and look for small, inexpensive offerings.

I first tried posting images on the Jekyll Island Facebook wall. That may have got a few people familiar with my name, and done some good for Jekyll, but there was no sales associated with that effort.

My next effort was to consider postcards for sale in the campground office. As I evaluated this, I realized that I could not realistically compete with the commercially printed postcards that were offered.

The next opportunity that I created was to put some of my images on 13"X19" posters which I could print in my motor home. I selected a few good prints, added "Jekyll Island Georgia" on the bottom, and posted some in the windshield of my motor home. These were nearly invisible, so I got permission to post in the community room. This was very soft sell... I didn't even mention that they were for sale anywhere at first. Later I added an 8-1/2X11 sale sheet with contact information. This produced a couple sales, but these got much more play when I presented them at the craft/art sale during the February Pancake Breakfast.

The Pancake Breakfast craft/art sale is the only opportunity for the rest of the Island to come see what we're up to. To fill the table at the craft sale, I also generated some note cards, in packages of four, and a few matted prints.

The next event was the Art Festival at the Jekyll Art Center. This juried competition was free to enter (for members)and framed prints could be sold. I scrambled off to Michael's and bought a few frames that I thought looked good, and selected some prints to frame. For the first time, the Festival created 5 photo categories, as well as beginner, intermediate and advanced classes, with a limit of 6 photos. I consulted with another artist, Nancy Hoffman, for her input on photo selections, and entered 3 landscapes, 2 people, and one "alternative" photo, collected 2 second place ribbons, a third, and an honorable mention for the alternative. In addition, my second and third place landscape photos were sold, one during the Festival and one before.

Another way to get known was to offer photography classes in the campground. This was primarily on Picasa, but the first session was about taking better photos.

Yet another effort was to ask friends to pose for me on Driftwood Beach. I had been helping them with their computer problems, so it was a fair exchange. It took a while to find the right combination of weather and tides, but I got some great shots on the beach. This generated two additional requests for portrait sessions, all taking place on three consecutive days.

A friend of mine in St. Mary's, GA, is retiring from the Navy in July. We met through photography, as he hired me to help with Christmas Party portrait photo sales. He thought that he wanted to be a professional photographer full time after his Navy PR job, so he bought some more equipment, rented some space and set up a studio. He lined up some weddings. A few days ago, I got a call from him, saying that he caved to the money and decided to take a non-photo job in New York. He is selling his studio.

I've heard it said that it takes 4 years to develop a photography business. I'd say that I'm now in about 5 years. I keep studying and reading, improving my quality and skills, and now I'm discovering marketing. I might make it before I die.