Mucky NEX-5 Sensor - AAAAARGH!

[Eric Webb]

A few months after buying it I finally had the chance to use my NEX-5 in earnest last week - on holiday in Turkey. Reviewing the output I quickly became aware of a small fixed 'blot' in many pictures, more or less visible dependent on background and aperture setting - evidently sensor dust or somesuch. Removable in 'Elements' but annoying as I had never yet had the lens off. Home again I purchased all the right stuff to sort this out - I hoped! Sensor swabs, Eclipse cleaning fluid. NOT cheap.

Off I went, the trouble is now 10 times worse, muck everywhere. This isn't dust, it's more as if there's oil or somesuch all around the sensor mount, and the more I try to clean it up the more appears.

The camera is now fit for nothing but the bin. Even if it can be expensively professionally cleaned - and I cannot locate any such service within 100 miles - it's clearly vulnerable to repeat problems. Presumably there's the same risk with any interchangeable lens camera. None of the fixed-lens compacts appeals, so looks like my 40 year photographic hobby has finally hit the buffers.

'Miserable' doesn't begin to describe how I feel. Where did I put the rat poison!

Eric

[pakodominguez]

The camera is now fit for nothing but the bin. Even if it can be expensively professionally cleaned - and I cannot locate any such service within 100 miles - it's clearly vulnerable to repeat problems. Presumably there's the same risk with any interchangeable lens camera. None of the fixed-lens compacts appeals, so looks like my 40 year photographic hobby has finally hit the buffers.

Hi Eric,

I'm sorry to hear about your problematic NEX5... Where do you live? I think that the best you can do is contact Sony and send the camera to their Repair Service. Cleaning and Lubrication (well, not that much to lubricate on this cameras, that's true) can be done under warranty AFAIK

Regards

[bakubo]

Eric, I am sorry to hear of your very bad luck. It sounds like something was on the sensor when you received the camera since you had never removed the lens. I think at this point all you can do is send it to Sony to have them clean the sensor. I hope they can fix it and they should do it under warranty since the problem was a Day 1 problem. Good luck! Let us know what happens.

[David Kilpatrick]

Eric, if you were able to get the camera to me I'd have a go with professional cleaning kits as I have several different types. It is difficult to do this right, and fluids are the most difficult thing to use. It's not typical for the NEX - mine has no spots after a year of use and the camera itself is quite scruffy.

David

[Vidgamer]

Based on online recommendations, I got a Giotto's brand "rocket blower" years ago. I don't touch the sensor and as far as I can tell, I have been able to take care of dust issues on both of my interchangeable lens cameras. Some dust can be more stubborn than others and requires a bit more effort.

I have read that a lot of these cleaning kits are specific to certain sensor designs, so I've been wary of trying them. Sticking to my rocket-blower...

But in your current position, yeah, I say send it into Sony (or give to someone who's willing to try to rescue it) rather than the waste bin.

[Eric Webb]

Well! I finally got the ruddy thing clean! This took 2+ hours on 2 separate occasions, over a boxful of Sensor Swabs @ £36 the box and many, many drops of that equally expensive super-pure meths. This in a 'new' camera that had never before had the lens off. Clean-room assembly line? I don't think so! It wasn't just dust I was fighting either, it was smear-y muck too.

A few tips:

First of all, Sony's own on-line advice as to cleaning mode is wrong, wrong, WRONG! Go into cleaning mode, select, the camera appears to turn off although it is still switched on. Do not, not, NOT switch it off until AFTER you have finished cleaning!

I found standard Sensor Swab advice to sweep right across the sensor from edge to edge unhelpful. Sony have left manufacturing muck around the sensor edges, and in substantial quanitity, this technique moves it into vision. Start from the middle of the sensor, sweep to one edge but don't drive the swab all the way to the edge 'cause that's where the muck is, keep it a hairsbreadth clear, turn the swab over, sweep the other way, again from the middle to almost the edge.

Obviously this leaves the muck at the sensor edge, just beyond vision. Likely it is going to find its way back sooner or later . However, for the time being and the rat poison can be kept for the rats!

But what a kludge this whole 'interchangeable lens' business is! The dirt problem ought to have been engineered out by placing the cover glass a long way further ahead of the sensor, but that would have required fundamentally re-thinking lens design. Too much trouble, plus no retro-fit facility - but how many users are actually exploiting that? So we are left with this dreadful Achilles heel! At best, I like the NEX a lot, but really, sealed unit compacts do seem the better way forward.

Eric

[agorabasta]

Eric,

I did not advise you anything earlier, as an advice may be very counter-productive depending on who is trying to follow. Seems like you definitely are not a typical meek consumer So here's my regular procedure:

Using swabs always leaves some residue. If the swab is made of plastic foam, the residue is exactly a thin film of 'muck' from the foam material partly dissolved in the liquid it's soaked with. Long shelf life before you buy them doesn't help at all.
Then the swabs made of microfiber tissue also leave some those fibres behind, especially as you touch the sharp edges of the frame surrounding the sensor top and the fibres get loose.

So after the wet cleaning there must be a round or two of dry cleaning as well. I normally use the 'Lenspen' dry graphite lubricated 'pencils'.
Then those pencils leave some particles of the graphite lube behind too. So some air blowing is also necessary. A good manual blower should be enough.

Now about the canned air. It cannot be used as it is, since it's not really the air, it's some highly volatile liquid that also is a weak solvent. So it may spit out drops of that liquid when the can gets too cold.
But there's a solution allowing the use of those cans. Their output need be warmed before it enters the camera. So a long thin plastic hose may be used to do so as the gas warms up travelling through it. You may wind about one metre of such hose around your arm, for example. It's also better to use a transparent silicone hose - this way you may see where the mist stops to appear on the way to exit; then if the mist forming gets too close to exit, you may just stop for a while.

All the Sony cams I ever used were very prone to catching too much dust/muck while they were new. Then after two good cleans within a few months of use they simply stop catching it that much.