40D Replacement Arrived, Junk on Sensor Right Out of the Box!

Okay, I haven't even shot with it yet. I just opened the box, my replacement 40D arrived 10 minutes ago.

I put in a fresh battery and CF card, set the time and date, then set the manual cleaning mode for the sensor and looked at it with my Scope Sensor.

The bloody thing has 5 or 6 big specs and about 10 other little ones. The Giottos Rocket blower won't budge any of them.

Well, I'm disappointed.

For 1300 bucks it SHOULD NOT be dirty out of the box!

Shame on Canon!!!

Well folks, do you think I should keep it or send it back?

My guts are churning right now. I'll go outside and take some stopped down shots of the blue sky and see. I'll post them in a bit.

Thoughts?



Michael

Learn to clean your sensor. Canon cameras always come with dust thoughtfully installed.

See, I've purchased 3 Canon SLR's and none of them have had dust that was requiring sending it to a service center. If I get a 40D, I will hope it doesn't have dust in it either. Shoot a few and if it's awful, send it back. I can't imagine Canon does this on purpose, though.

In the literally thousands of SLR's I've sold over the last two and half years I don't think I've ever seen one clean out the box when I've checked. And it doesn't matter who's it is. One guy even wrote to Canon Japan to the BIG boss about it once, taking him over nine months to go through all the people til he got to the top. Net result, not a lot of difference. it's just how it is.

Cleaning a sensor isn't a big deal, sorry.

SuzyView wrote in post #4064220
See, I've purchased 3 Canon SLR's and none of them have had dust that was requiring sending it to a service center.

The OP's dust bunnies don't require a trip to the service center, just a wet cleaning.

No, they don't do it on purpose but they don't assemble these things in vacuum sealed rooms either.

I don't believe a brand new camera should be this dirty out of the box. When I had the same issue, before I got the ER99s, I called Canon USA and they said "no way... that shouldn't happen"

He she is, right out of the box, brand-spank'n-new 40D:

f/16:

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Genuinely, I've seen worse. And on Nikons and Olympuses (plural of Olympus? or is it Olympi?).

Well, all us DSLR owners live with dust....even if it came clean, it would get dust on it, so don't sweat it.

It take seconds to clean in photoshop.

Also, I never shoot at F22 for any of my landscapes.....you get softer images than at F16.....focus 2/3's into the frame at F16 and your have full DOF.

Honestly, it's not bad at all. You should see what my 30D had when I got it new and what it collected at each air show. I'd be pretty pleased if mine were that clean.

Really, even if you got a perfectly clean one (good luck) you'll be needing to clean it anyway after a while especially if you change lenses at airshows.

Duncaji wrote in post #4064423
Also, I never shoot at F22 for any of my landscapes.....you get softer images than at F16.....focus 2/3's into the frame at F16 and your have full DOF.

I used to shy away from f/22 shots but after a recent outing have reversed my opinion. I'm very happy with my 40D images at f/22. I used the f/22 to help get long shutter speeds on flowing water and was pleasantly surprised by the sharpness in the rest of the image.

I did have one tiny dust spec to clone out though.

https://photography-on-the.net …4417&posted=1#p​ost4064417

that's not the worse.

I paid $1 less for my dust.

I just spoke with Canon USA, the Virginia office, and they said that the sensor should not be dirty out of the box.

In addition, they could not verify that the Canon Irvine service center would clean it for free or not. I asked to have my call escallated to the next level and spoke with a service manager who is contacting the Irvine center to find out if they will clean it.

Thanks for your replies, I know that we DSLR shooters will always have to live with dust, but sheeeeez!!!, it is just so disappointing to have this happen a second time right out of the box. It would be one thing if I had been out shooting, changing lenses in the wind... oh well, it is what it is.

If Canon will clean it for free, I'll make the drive, I'd like to have it clean for the airshow.

I'll update when I learn more. For now, I'm going to attach the battery grip and go shoot.

If I get one ER99, it's going back for sure.

Michael

Dust, dirt, grease is common on mass produced products. It's all a part of the manufacturing process.

If you bought a kitchen appliance... like a blender... would you pull it right out of the box and dump juice and stuff in and run it? Or would you wash out the blender first? Of course, most people would wash it first because it's known that manufacturing particles and oils are often left behind on products. And this is on FOOD processing hardware, leaving behind stuff that could be toxic to us.

so I think getting a mass produced camera with a couple specks of dust on a sensor isn't anything to whine about. So just clean it. No big deal. Sensor cleaning is just a regular part of dslr life.

every dslr I've gotten had particles on the sensor and needed wet cleaning. no big deal. You can return body after body, or clean it once and enjoy shooting.

I'll bet it's not dust. Do an experiment. Go take some shots. Preferably with some high speed bursts. Do not do any lens changes. Then take another test shot. There will be more blobs than you had to begin with. It is blobs of lubricant being flung off of the mechanical parts.