Jeffrey Friedl (yes, that Jeffrey Friedl) has posted an interesting animated image of the Nikon D3’s shutter in action. You can see the reflex mirror lift and the focal plane shutter expose the sensor for the requisite length of time. The action behind one of the most familiar and distinctive mechanical sounds in the world. (Re the contrived title, sorry, couldn’t resist)
Just been poking around the Flickr stats pages. Here’s a chart of camera brands arranged by popularity among Flickr users (the stats are derived from image EXIF data). The two manufacturers in the top two spots are predictable enough, but it’s interesting to see Sony* ahead of more traditional still camera brands such as Olympus, Kodak and FujiFilm. Also interesting to see Nokia camera phones ahead of other famous camera industry names such as Pentax, Konica-Minolta and Ricoh. Flickr’s statisticians point out that camera phones are the most likely to create images without EXIF data, and thus, as a general class, are under-represented in the stats.
Canon and Nikon hold the the number one and number two spots respectively, with Canon’s EOS Digital Rebel XT model, used to take 52,320,730 (sic!) of the images that have been uploaded to Flickr. The most popular Nikon model (in terms of images uploaded) is the D50 which has been used to shoot 25,368,091 of Flickr’s images. There are some staggering numbers involved here!
Equally interesting is the “Activity Factor” figure which Flickr describes as “… a number derived from photos, members and a model’s rank to indicate cameras that are used ‘a lot’“. In other words, the Activity Factor shows the cameras that are used the most by their owners.
My own camera (now a discontinued model) is responsible for 15,285,064 Flickr images, with 27,162 of those being uploaded yesterday.
(*Before you consider buying a Sony DSLR, you might want to check out the reviews on DPReview.com. It seems that Sony have some way to go before its still cameras match the quality of its video cameras.)
Back in March I posted about Fixation’s DSLR sensor cleaning service in London (incidentally, the third most visited post on this blog) and I’ve finally gotten around to availing myself of the service. I had my Canon 30D’s CMOS sensor cleaned yesterday and the results are pretty good.
Newly cleaned Canon 30D CMOS sensor
Only one major dust speck remains (upper right edge of image - view the original upload to see) with a less serious speck near the centre of the image and a few other faint ones scattered around. Some of these specks may be on the rear of the lens. I haven’t changed the lens since the clean so I can’t yet verify that. Either way, they will hopefully be invisible in most images.
Whatever one may think of the results, it’s a significantly better job than that once performed by Canon UK’s own cleaning service on the sensor of my old D60 (back in the days when Canon were in public denial about the susceptability of their DSLR’s to dust). I once managed to clean my sensor to a similar standard as that pictured here, but it took me an entire day of painstaking work with isopropyl alcohol, microfibre cloths draped over a rubber-tipped “art chisel” and lots of hand washing, regular wiping down of nearby surfaces and wash-dry cycles for the cleaning cloths.
Fixation thoroughly cleaned both the front and back of my attached lens as well as the sensor (so leave your favourite lens attached when you drop off your camera). The lens used to take this shot was the one attached when I took it for cleaning yesterday and it has not been removed from the camera body since, so this image is an accurate portrayal of the results of the cleaning.
It would have been instructive to do a before-after comparison, but I seem to have deleted the images I took of the state of the sensor before the clean. You’ll just have to take my word for the fact that it wasn’t pretty. The last time I checked, there were at least half a dozen specks similar to the one that remains at the top-right edge of the image, two or three of those significantly larger that the one that remains. Indeed, they were large enough to be annoyingly visible in ordinary images. In addition there was a plethora of fainter, light grey spots all over the sensor. It was a bit of a mess.
The image is of a large piece of (blemish free) white card, taken out of focus with a 50mm prime at F/22 and scaled to half its original size. I used the GIMP’s auto levels function to highlight the remaining blemishes on the sensor-lens combination.
The rather drastic light-fall off in the top corners is due to the lighting on the subject and not the lens (or the camera). Other shots I took had similar fall-off but in other sections of the image. I couldn’t seem to take a shot that didn’t have similar fall-off somewhere in the image - I think this might be something to do with the maths behind the GIMP’s auto-levels function (?) as I don’t recall the same tool in Photoshop creating results with this degree of light fall-off when used on similar types of image. But don’t worry, I took other images which were not underexposed in the top corners and which confirmed that no significant blemishes or dust specks are lurking there.
Fixation is surprisingly anonymous from the street and you could easily pass it by without seeing any clue that the company is there. The staff I encountered were pleasant and helpful and when the woman who dealt with me saw Jake (my three year old son) she recommended Vauxhall City Farm, a small, free to visit urban farm a block away. It was a great place to keep the little one amused while I waited for the clean to be done. (It’s clearly run by people who love what they do and is well worth a visit, especially if you have kids - and don’t forget to make a small donation on your way out, their money box is guaranteed to make you smile).
One final note, if you travel by car to Fixation you can get there without having to pay the congestion charge if you thread your way carefully. They have a limited number of parking bays in front of their offices, but if those are full you can always park in Tesco’s car park, barely a hundred metres away. (Tesco allows its customers a three hour stay. Fixation staff no doubt provide Tesco with a constant source of revenue, so it’s probably not that much of a liberty to park there).
Yet again DPReview shows everyone else how to do technical reviews. Just check out the interactive Flash applet for this Nikon lens review. Rotate the zoom and aperture dials at the bottom to redraw the graphs, and use the drop down menus to select different optical tests and comparisons with other equipment. Amazing stuff.
If you are going to use Flash, this is how to do it!
(It also works fine in Firefox 3 Beta 5 on Ubuntu 8.04 using the Adobe proprietary player.)
If you’re tired of the sheer embuggerance involved in cleaning your DSLR’s image sensor, you might be interested in Fixation, a professional photographic services company at Vauxhall in London. They offer while-you-wait sensor cleaning for most cropped sensor Canon and Nikon models at £28.00 + VAT, and at £55.00 + VAT for full-frame models.
That sounds pretty good to me. Given that the last time I attempted to thoroughly clean my sensor it took me an entire day, £28.00 + VAT sounds pretty reasonable. I’ll probably be dropping off my camera there sometime in the next few weeks. I’ll report back with the experience.
If you’d rather clean your sensor yourself, Fixation have a useful looking guide on their site full of tips regarding cleaning technique and products. Given their experience, it’s probably one of the more trustworthy guides available.
(I finally got my sensor cleaned by Fixation. Here’s the update)