Dust Bunnies and sensor dirt on full frame DSLR cameras

Here's an image which, although not particularly interesting is one I wanted to work on.

I needed to use a small aperture of f22 for this shot to slow everything down as I didn't have a neutral density filter, and that's where the trouble starts because a small aperture shows all the dust bunnies.

At a glance, there's only a couple of dust spots visible, but once I look at the top half of it in Lightroom.

Every one of those stands out like a sore thumb at 100% and not only does it fail my own QC, it would fail Alamy QC, and get me a short uploading ban.

This is what it looks like as I remove, or clone out the spots.

Then, a little more work and I have the finished image.

It's not a keeper for me, unfortunately, as it is, as I said earlier, a bit boring, but it's all good practice.
Dust bunnies will always be a problem with DSLR mirrored and even mirrorless cameras even with the utmost hygiene practices and care whilst changing lenses, and, for me, it's why I may go the way of mirrorless compacts (think the full-frame Sony RX1, RX1R) when I next change my main gear.

Canon 6d 10 seconds ISO 100 @ f22. Poniente beach and Peacock Island, Benidorm, Costa Blanca, Spain.

Comments

Image sizes for Alamy stock photographs

Almost every week there seems to be a post in the Alamy Forum in which a new contributor is struggling to understand the Alamy submission requirements for file size. The website info is quite clear... Q. What file size do I need to upload? A. We need a JPEG file size of over 17MB when uncompressed (this is likely to have a compressed JPEG size of 3-5MB). Opening a JPEG in an image program such as Adobe Photoshop will show you the uncompressed (open) file size. This still doesn't seem to answer the questions which are posted in the forum, so the best solution is to always use this small standalone App from Braeside Communication Services. As you can see, it shows the compressed size and also the uncompressed size. It will show a warning if the file size falls below the threshold. The two files shown in the image above are fine to upload to Alamy. Download here... AlamySizeCheck A donation to David Anderson would be nice.

Staying legal with photos posted on your own internet posts.

You've written a fantastic post about your visit to France and just need a couple of pictures to help pad it out and be more interesting, after all, 'a picture is worth a thousand words', so do you just grab one from a Google search? This 800 pixel image of Chateau Chenonceau is big enough for social media and blog posts and is only 176kb so it loads fast for your viewers. Yes you can... but be prepared for the owner to come after you for infringing their copyright after they find it being used without permission on your internet platforms. The best way to obtain pictures to use within your own web content, be that on Facebook, Blogs or any other internet platform (within reason), is to buy a licence which will cover you for the use. I allow my own images to be downloaded for such uses in two sizes on my website here... mickflynnimages . They are all provided instantly, do not contain a watermark and are ideal to illustrate your stories and articles. News

Here we go again with blatant Image theft.

Believe me, I don't sit around all day waiting for people to take my pictures and use them for their own profit, but, it still astounds me that journalists simply don't seem to think there will be any penalty if they help themselves to an image off the internet, with not the slightest attempt to qualify the ownership of the intellectual property. Most of my photographic output goes directly to stock, but some of it is shared on social media, by choice but with no licence for use by anyone else. The ones shared on social media are usually on facebook on closed groups, and despite what people thinking and saying that Facebook can do whatever they want with your images it is simply not true. I retain copyright and do not allow licensing of my images when I share them on Facebook, so, if you take them for a commercial venture you are infringing my copyright and stealing my property. Now, if you were to just share them to a local history group on facebook I might not be both

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