Spot on images at F22

[Mike Taramykin]

Hey guys, I recently noticed a spot that's showing up in my footage when I shoot at F22. Because of the spot's location in the frame it's only visible when I shoot at 5K.

Does anyone know what this could be and how I can fix it? Given the look, I don't think it's dust... looks more like a water drop. The camera is only 1 month old and used mainly indoors.

I marked it with arrows in the pics below.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

When you are shooting at F22 these spots are more likely to show up if there is a smudge, dust, water stain, etc.

Do you have a loupe you can check your OLPF?

Also check your lenses.

 

[Shervin Mandgaryan]

Agreed, it's probably dust on either the sensor or the rear element for it to show up at F22.

 

[Florian Stadler]

Time to clean your sensor. You've just discovered a way to check the gate: remove ND's point to sky, discover dust/dirt on sensor

 

[paulherrin]

beautiful sky. looks like an itty bitty piece of dust on the sensor, olpf, or lens (could also be inside the lens)

 

[Phil Holland]

As others mentioned its dust. Likely on the OLPF. Read the manual and you'll learn what Red recommends to clean it. Be very careful if you attempt this yourself.

 

[Lee Saxon]

You shouldn't be shooting at f/22 anyway. Light hits the sensor at too sharp of an angle and causes a loss of sharpness/resolution that more than offsets the increased depth of field.

 

[Mike Taramykin]

Thanks for the quick replies.

I just made the move to Red from shooting DSLR and my D800 needs to be cleaned regularly (esp when shooting HDR.) I did check multiple lenses and the spot is consistent on all of them.

So my next question is... any recommendations on what supplies to use for cleaning? I have an Arctic Butterfly and Visual Dust DSLR sensor solution with 1.0X swabs (again, all for the D800). Will that work on a Red OLPF too? I'm not sure if I need a different size swab.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Jeb Sanford]

I've never used swabs or solutions to remove sensor dust. A hand blower has always done the trick with the camera/sensor pointed downward.

 

[paulherrin]

i would double check the manual (as phil suggested) for any special instructions, but that arctic butterfly will probably do fine. as always, be extra careful.

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Definitely see what you can do with a blower first before thinking about using swabs to clean your olpf/ir filter pack.

 

[Mike Taramykin]

Thanks for the sanity check. I'll try the blower first and then the Butterfly if the spot remains. Since the Nikon has a moving mirror it's prone to lubrication splatter... and no blower can fix that. Guess i instantly jumped to the worst case scenario before realizing that this is a completely different animal.

 

[Robino_J]

Same happened to me this weekend. It was a super tiny 1mm white hair hanging on the olpf. I was shooting at f10.3 and it was a big blotch in the sky. Use an air blower to clean the gate when changing lenses in the field.

**Edit - It was f10.3 not f5.6

 

[Mike Taramykin]

I took a look inside and there was indeed a spec of something. Air blower cleaned it off... will test tomorrow when it's light out.