Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Well, the orther shoe had to drop!
I never really believed in sensor cleaning by the camera by having the chip wiggle itself clean! Well an interesting study has at least made me laugh a while!
Our friends at PixInfo have examined 4 chip self cleaning systems from Canon Eos-400D, Sony Alpha DSLR-A100, Olympus E-300 and the great new Pentax K10D and I quote
Dust removal conclusion
Here is our ranking according to effectiveness:
Olympus: good
Canon: poor (we are disappointed)
Pentax and Sony: useless (we are very disappointed)
If you are looking for a camera, have the dust removal as an expectation only at the end of your list. If sensor cleaning / dust removal is a must, the choices are limited to Olympus and Panasonic cameras.
We guess that theoretically it is possible to get better results with Canon cameras when the CMOS sensor is not charged, but Canon must find a way to discharge the sensor first (if this is is the problem). If the system is so unreliable, the EOS-ICS is not much more than a good marketing name.
In case of Sony, Pentax and Samsung cameras, the dust removal function should be considered as almost non-existent.
The final conclusion: keep your air blower handy, it is still your best tool against dust.
Is it hubris that we would come to this?
Amazed and disappointed that having got drunk on a mepapixel race, the marketing departments now piush sensor cleaning that appears, at least in this report, questionable?
Now one can argue that the folk here used the wrong dust! Certainly, the amount of dust used was more than I've ever experienced. Also a lot of crud comes from the inside of the camera not from a testing laboratory! All the parts that move, flake!
Well then there's dust everywhere, So what's new?
Who really thinks that their camera system works?
Asher
I never really believed in sensor cleaning by the camera by having the chip wiggle itself clean! Well an interesting study has at least made me laugh a while!
Our friends at PixInfo have examined 4 chip self cleaning systems from Canon Eos-400D, Sony Alpha DSLR-A100, Olympus E-300 and the great new Pentax K10D and I quote
Dust removal conclusion
Here is our ranking according to effectiveness:
Olympus: good
Canon: poor (we are disappointed)
Pentax and Sony: useless (we are very disappointed)
If you are looking for a camera, have the dust removal as an expectation only at the end of your list. If sensor cleaning / dust removal is a must, the choices are limited to Olympus and Panasonic cameras.
We guess that theoretically it is possible to get better results with Canon cameras when the CMOS sensor is not charged, but Canon must find a way to discharge the sensor first (if this is is the problem). If the system is so unreliable, the EOS-ICS is not much more than a good marketing name.
In case of Sony, Pentax and Samsung cameras, the dust removal function should be considered as almost non-existent.
The final conclusion: keep your air blower handy, it is still your best tool against dust.
Is it hubris that we would come to this?
Amazed and disappointed that having got drunk on a mepapixel race, the marketing departments now piush sensor cleaning that appears, at least in this report, questionable?
Now one can argue that the folk here used the wrong dust! Certainly, the amount of dust used was more than I've ever experienced. Also a lot of crud comes from the inside of the camera not from a testing laboratory! All the parts that move, flake!
Well then there's dust everywhere, So what's new?
Who really thinks that their camera system works?
Asher
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