I sat down yesterday to clean a couple of thousand images worth of nose prints off my istD and K10D and the salt spray off my transparent lens caps (filters) and noticed a few things.
Despite a reasonable amount of use and frequent changes of lenses neither was in need of a sensor clean. I used to attack the istD every few weeks when I first got it due to the amount of spots on my images. Now I hardly need to clean it at all. The K10D developed a few spots after the first few weeks and after cleaning it once with a Visible Dust sensor brush I haven't needed to do anything to it again (I do use the shake on start up option, but I used that from the beginning). Has anyone else noticed a reducing need to clean their sensor over time? I only own (well use really I have a few lenses that I haven't touched in 3 years) 3 optical items that aren't Pentax - a Sigma 55-200mm kit zoom that I got with my istD (It is to be replaced with the DA*60-250 later in the year), a Tamron 2X converter (come on Pentax how about some quality 1.4 and 2 times converters for autofocus) and a Frankenlens that Cotty would be proud of - it gives me 2 to 8 times magnification to the sensor. From the amount of salt on the filters of my lenses I will be using protective filters for a long time. I do take them off when I'm in a safe environment, but it's easier to take them off when it's safe than to put them on when it's not. The coating on one of my Hoya HMC filters has developed shiny spots and streaks and needs to be replaced and two other lenses have managed to keep really cheap filters that are creating extra flare in my pictures - these will be replaced as soon as I find out if I can buy Pentax filters in Australia, order them from overseas or find a place to buy B+W filters from. Now I have another 1600 images to database. -- Leon http://www.bluering.org.au http://www.bluering.org.au/leon -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
