I just wanted to share this with you all...

I was out and about yesterday testing my 24~70/2.8 along with the singh-ray variable ND+Polarizer bla bla bla...

BTW, the lens is AWESOME. PERIOD.

The Singh-Ray works great, but does do a tag vignetting at 2.4.

So I get home, and check out the shots, especially the long exposures.

What?! There is a very large persistence black dot on my pics! All on the long exposures.

So I start testing and testing and testing.

It *must* be dirt on the sensor as the dot changes color and intensity the longer I expose...not a dead pixel!

So I say, cool, let me clean it. Thats when everything went down hill. I not only did not remove the dot, but added about 10 billion more! The more I cleaned the more it worsened.

And yes, I was using qtips. NEVER EVER EVER EVER <billion time more> use qtips.

Least to say, I did not sleep.

This morning, I drove down the a pro shop, got some Eclipse solution, a box of Sensor Swabs (12 per box), a large blower and went to work.

7 swabs later, 1 hour of cleaning, testing, cleaning, testing, I got down to 2 very small dots at the extreme corners at 22 second shot.

I'm going to leave it at that!

Needless to say, don't use qtips...BTW, very easy to do!

Phew, scared the #### out of me!

Thats it, just wanted to share my pain and joy!

~Kam

Visit my Nikonians gallery.