After the snow

[grandad35]

New England after the snow.

[Mills]

The second one is wonderful. Better check your sensor though, I think I see some dust.

[RbnDave]

I like the first one. It's like B and W but in color.

[stoneylonesome]

Nice shots, I do see a spot on the 2nd one check the lens first, more than likely it's dust on the lens and not the sensor.

[grandad35]

Thanks for the comments about the dirty sensor. In fact, I think that you are both right. I had already been outside for about 30 minutes when I took these shots, and I would not be surprised if there was some melted snow on the filter. This morning, when I had a nice blue sky to work with, I took a photo at f35, and the sensor has about 50 specks.

This brings up a few questions about the technique for taking a "sensor noise" shot, however. The sun wasn't up when I got up, so I decided to just shoot a picture of a white card. To avoid seeing the paper grain on the card, I decided to just shoot it out of focus at f2.8, since the dirt is on the sensor and I thought that the focus shouldn't matter. I thought that I was the luckiest dog in the world, taking 8000 shots over 12 months on my 300D and still having a perfectly clean sensor - there was not a hint of dust.

Since this was too good to be believed, I waited for the sun to come up, and was lucky to have a perfectly blue sky to work with. What a difference shooting according to the instructions makes! My question is: "Is the actual sensor buried so deep in the chip that dust on the surface blurs over many pixels unless all of the light that illuminates a dust particle comes from a very small source so that it arrives almost perfectly parallel?" If this is the case, what do you do when it's the middle of winter and the sky is a mottled gray for weeks on end? Will this variable light source give acceptable results?

I searched the forum and couldn't find any links dealing with this subject. Should I start a separate thread in the EOS Digital Camera forum?

Thanks

[ajbalazic]

Very nice shots, especially the second. It almost makes me wish winter would stay (almost).