Mr Barry Goldwater made me wanna cry

[cpasley]

I knew I had a slight sensor dust problem but was minor and could be fixed with the removal tool in Lightroom, well whe I got home from our outing today I realized it had got much worse, this is an example of a un-edited shot, grainy, bad color and the damn dust, obviously gonna have to break down anf take to tempe camera if I want it 100% by our next trip

[Joe Copalman]

I had my rocket blower with me, so had I known you had dust spot issues, I could have helped out.  The dust spots themselves are easy to clone out using layers/equalize/clone in Photoshop, but that hair/fiber thing is a toughy.  If a few good blows don't get it off, $35 for a cleaning at Tempe Camera will work wonders.  There are some great do-it-yourself cleaning kits out there, several AzAP guys swear by the Copperhill method.  Thinking I might give that a try, as the second body I got has really just freed up my other camera for my wife, so I'm changing lenses as much now as I was before, meaning I need a really good sensor cleaning once every month or so, but I can really only afford once every three months, if even that.  

[cpasley]

Thanks Joe, yeah I didnt know of the issues till I got my photos on the big screen, not all was lost I think I got a few usable shots, Tempe seems to be my best shot but I will look into this "copperhill method" as well, thanks for the advice

[Jay Beckman]

FWIW Chris,

I usually hit my bodies with the Rocket Blower before every shoot and I wet clean my sensors (Copperhill for me as well) roughly quarterly.

Cleanliness is so much more critical when you do the type of shooting we do.  Slow shutter speeds for prop blur means small apertures which makes the crud even more pronounced.  Toss is a lot of open blue sky around our favorite subjects (even at Jet shutter speeds) and it gets even worse.

A little regular preventive maintenance means a lot less time in front of a computer.

EDIT: In looking at your EXIF, I see you were at f/16 which will really bring sensor crud into pretty sharp relief.  I'd recommend a faster shutter and larger aperture next time.

[cpasley]

Your right Jay, I had been shotting at high shutter speeds in order not to make ot look as bad, I didnt realize I was shooting at f/16, ill have to keep my eye on that especially since I was shooting A-10's

[Joe Copalman]

EDIT: In looking at your EXIF, I see you were at f/16 which will really bring sensor crud into pretty sharp relief.  I'd recommend a faster shutter and larger aperture next time.

+1 on this.  I shot at f/7.1 and f/8 primarily and still had some stuff to clone out.