Scratched Low Pass Filter on D40

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23124919@N03/show/with/2215251099/

Hopefully this is viewable to all--the flickr acct is brand new.

shrinkie1964 said:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23124919@N03/show/with/2215251099/

Click to expand...

Well, if Nikon Canada says thats a scratch, then I suppose it must be. Still, I'd hit it again once or twice with some Eclipse and a pec pad just to make absolutely sure it's not just a bit of schmootz stuck on top.

--
'Here, look at the monkey. Look at the silly monkey!'

Tom Young
http://www.pbase.com/tyoung/

I have been obsessively tracking the size and shape of the thing and I swear it has been getting a bit longer the more I fiddle with cleaning, but it could be that this is an artifact of my efforts to make the blemish clearer with contrast control and sharpening--could make the edges a bit darker and thick and add a few pixels in each dimension.

I think this represents a cut in the ITO surface, and those edges could be friable and subject to trauma. I imagine it like when a varnish begins to peel--you rub the edges enough, more stuff comes off and the bare spot gets bigger. That means no more pads or sensor swabs or alcohols. Maybe a proper sensor brush or a good quality artists paint brush, but as far as I am concerned I will live with this and try to work around it. In time I won't obsess about it, and I may take only the occasional ref photo to see if the mark is changing.

There has been some talk in another thread of the D40 perhaps being supplanted soon, not to mention the ongoing debate about whether fewer pixels can actually look better and less digital. At any rate, despite my goof and the damage, the camera still can take some nifty and gratifying shots in my experimenting amateur hands, albeit with some creative composition and cropping and fun with post processing:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23124919@N03/sets/72157603784076254/show/

thanks again,

Les

Yikes! Sure does look like a tear in the coating to me. I've never seen any gunk that looks like that. Meanwhile, the sensor appears to be really dirty. That's a lot more dust than I could live with. Have you considered the SensorKlear pen? You can clean the rest of the sensor with it and avoid touching the tear, and it should clean up the other junk on your fliter.
--
David

I have taken all of the support and good advice here to heart, and I must admit that for all of its glitches the wounded D40 has become my favourite day-to-day camera with the cheapo 18-55 kit lens. I have a pristine D80 and several excellent lenses, but the light D40 goes in the bag if I think I may want to take photos on a whim while in the midst of doing something else. Knowing about the scratching and the limitations of the equipment has challenged my growing skill set, and as a result I have taken some of the most pleasing photos I have ever taken just in the past two weeks.

At wide apertures the scratch artifact shows up as a faint splooge that is easily blended out with what you will in post-processing. At higher apertures the artifact is more refined, and unfortunately is too large and jagged to be taken out in Capture NX. Fortunately, pixel-level retouching isn't as onerous as I thought it would be, and I have yet to post process a pic that I could not clean up satisfactorily.

As for ongoing maintenance of the sensor filter, I am staying away from wet cleanings, and will be content with occassional blowings and brushings with a soft 13mm artist's brush. This hardly gets everything, but given my growing post processing skills I don't fret so much anymore about the occasional speck in the sky. I have been tracking the size and shape of the scratch, and even though it is not increasing much in dimensions it does seem to be getting a little wider at points. So I am reluctant to contact this sensor filter much any more unless I see stuff that I just can't live with.

I have decided not to give my niece the camera for now. I think she is still a little young.

Given all of the hoopla this week regarding the D60, and some other threads rehashing the old megapixels vs. picture quality question, I have decided to see whether I could make the most out of budget equipment that is, moreover, flawed. I have found I can do so. I admit I spend quite a bit of time in post-processing in massage out the visible flaws in pics I like, but I must admit I would do so anyway with any pic I plan to distribute, print, or just show off.

So thank you all for your support and feedback. It looks like it will all work out. And vow never to stick anything smaller than my elbow into the D80 or D70

Les

Done exactly the same as you with my D50,sent it to Nikon hopefully for a clean,Nikon sent me an estimate for £235 for a new sensor. I love my camera so the jobs getting done.

Glad you are able to turn a lemon into lemonaid. However, I question the lesson you have learned.

I understand how you don't want to stick anything larger than your elbow into your other cameras, but it really sounds like you injured your D40 because you used the wrong kind of Eclipse and it eroded the coating. There are tens of thousands of people who are cleaning their cameras with various substances that contact the sensor filter, including all the technicians at Nikon, Canon, etc., and all the camera techs in camera shops, but also a lot of ordinary users. Very few of them have a problem. And, if you use the Photographic Solutions kit, they'll pay to get your camera repaired if you do damage it in cleaning, using their swabs and the correct solution.

I repeat my recommendation of the SensorKlear, described convincingly here:

http://www.sensorklearreview.blogspot.com

Good shooting!

David

Wow, Peter, you must positively love that particular D50!

GBP235 is about USD460 or so, right? A quick search of a certain auction site shows that D50 bodies are going for up to about $400-500 tops these days, often much cheaper with skilful bidding! I know that UK import taxes and shipping can add a fair bit to that, but still it is a viable option.

I haven't had my D40 long enough to develop a deep attachment to it, so if I am so inclined I would sooner replace than fix it. And if the D60 causes much of a stir, used D40s will be available quite cheaply and plentifully in the next year. Heck, it may actually be cheaper to get a dead one and cannibalize the sensor filter and have some friend skilled with small electronics swap it in himself!

Nice to know I am not alone.

Les

Hi Les, thanks for your reply. I did look at alternatives, but I was concerned buying another D50 on e-bay that maybe same problem with a cleaning bill for sensor or very high shutter count. I didn't really want a D40 even though I priced these up as well, thinking it was a backward step, can't wait to get my camera back, cheers,Pete.

Peter, your reasoning is perfectly clear, now.

As for me, the fates have decided it for me. After all of my coming to terms with the splooge on the sensor filter and schooling myself in postprocessing, the thing fell off the couch onto my hardwood floor and now the flash will pop-up but not fire, even though flash photography is as usual with the SB-600. On removing the base of the camera (the warranty has been killed by me, so what the heck) a little bit of plastic popped out, presumably part of some switching mechanism that powers the flash on when it is up.

So I threw in the towel, but I do love the camera. So I promptly ordered a refurbished factory demo from a highly rated place on a certain auction site, and my hobbled D40 is up for sale on that site as I write.

Someone told me earlier that this is about a $300 mistake and it seems pretty well spot on. The replacement will set me back about $420US all told, and I hope to get about $100 for my dead one--heck, the manuals, strap, cables, charger and battery are worth that alone! The original D40 body was $526CAD including taxes, so at the end of the day it all works out to $850US for this camera body. Yes, that is roughly twice the present going rate, and the price will drop even more as the D60 enters the spotlight. An expensive lesson, but I like the camera, and in time the cost will hurt less. But from now on my cameras will live in my protective camera bag safely on the floor when they aren't in service.

I plan to do penance by depriving myself of that Sigma 17-70 2.8 HSM lenses I have been admiring....

It occurred to me that I seem so cavalier and careless with my equipment, but I must advise that that is not so. My 3 year old D70 is still going strong and has managed to avoid trauma and misadventure. And after my adventures with the D40, my D80 has been treated so gingerly that it may take awhile before I get comfortable using it. But when it comes to the D40, I do feel I have a curse upon me! I tell, when I get the replace I will treat it like it is a D3. Actually, I have learned that all of these cameras deserve such respect.

Thanks, again, for your patient listening.

Les

I do hope you reconsider your sensor cleaning method, and got the correct fluid.
Now about the fall.....perhaps a little caution is in order
--
Gene from Western Pa

http://imageevent.com/grc6
http://grc225.zenfolio.com/
FZ10....20 and 30 and FZ18

D50 ....D80 - 18 to 200VR- 50mm 1.8 - 80 to 400 OS



Just trying to learn and it's slow going!

Yup, in the camera bag and on the floor is the way to go. Same thing when travelling with the camera in the car, even for a short ride. You seem to have learned a couple of hard lessons.
--
David

My hobbled D40 just sold for $180US, almost twice what I was expecting. I wrote the buyer to make absolutely sure he knew what he was getting, and he assures me he does and he believes the unit can be restored.

With the price of new, used, and refurbished D40 bodies dropping this has all come as a pleasant surprise. I wish I had put the thing up for auction after I scratched the filter but before the drop that killed the flash--I may have gotten more.

So the $300 mistake is looking a little more like a $200 mistake, which somehow hurts a little less. If I get 100 great shots out of the D40 over the next year, I feel I would've made up for my clumsiness.

Les

ocrampix said:

flyt100 said:

Long story short, after a bunch of cleanings with Eclipse to try to
remove what I swore was a scratch, I tried distilled water. It
worked perfectly.

I'd definitely try distilled water. You might get lucky.

Click to expand...

How can distilled water remove a physical scratch on the low-pass
filter?

Marco

Click to expand...

My point was that even though it looked like a physical scratch (and a camera shop "confirmed" it after failing to clean it), it wasn't. It was water soluble, but not alcohol soluble.

Good for you Les, and a relatively happy ending! But what are you going to do about cleaning sensors in the future - has this put you off?

David

glad to hear the saga had a (relatively ) happy ending

phil

David Bookbinder said:

Yup, in the camera bag and on the floor is the way to go. Same thing
when travelling with the camera in the car, even for a short ride.
You seem to have learned a couple of hard lessons.
--
David

Click to expand...

I put the camera bag on a seat and belt it in. This way it doesn't bounce around on the floor. I use the no bounce, no bump system.
--
Stan ;o()



In the spirit of Occam’s Razor one should embrace the less complicated formulation or simply put, less is more.

I've tried the belt-it-in approach, too, but found I sometimes got lazy. The floor's a sure thing, for me, and so far I've noted no issues due to the bag bouncing around a bit with the camera lens-down.
--
David

David Bookbinder said:

I've tried the belt-it-in approach, too, but found I sometimes got
lazy. The floor's a sure thing, for me, and so far I've noted no
issues due to the bag bouncing around a bit with the camera lens-down.
--
David

Click to expand...

I never skipped putting seatbelts on my kids, how I make sure I belt in my camerabag. So I guess I was pre-trained not to forget.
--
Stan ;o()



In the spirit of Occam’s Razor one should embrace the less complicated formulation or simply put, less is more.