I have a Canon EOS 500D, 12 years old. Recently, while on holiday and using the camera a lot, a fuzzy spot appeared on my photos. I had not changed lenses at all at the time. I've tried cleaning the sensor with a blower, but spot still there. Strangely, the spot is also visible in the optical viewfinder. However it's not dust on the lens - the spot remains when I change lenses. Can anyone tell me what's going on? Thanks Dave S
The information is a bit at odds with itself, if it appears in the viewfinder and is not on the lens, then it would likely be on the mirror or prism. But neither of those would show on images, and if you have dust on the sensor then it would not show in the viewfinder. Can you post any images? Maybe you have dust on both? Regarding any pesky stuck dust on the sensor: While the blower is great for moving light dust around and getting it off the sensor a majority of the time, I did see a major flaw with the blower system, the dust can be moved usually but it doesn't really go anywhere, it gets blown into the corners of the mirror box to come back later, so I never started using the blower. Also the big problem is you can get some really lodged on sensor dust that wont blow off the sensor, and blowing at it in that situation will make it stick worse if that is the case. And even once I had a noticeable drop of what must have been some sort of grease from the mirror box land on my sensor. Neither case you can or should use a blower on. My worst dust I had was back when my main camera was a 20d, i adopted the swap/eclipse solution system as it will wipe the really sticky spots off with the first or second swab and remove the dust from the whole mirror box altogether so it did not settle back on the sensor. It Even cleaned up the drop of whatever oil or grease came of the mirror box in that camera. You may have to try this system to get your camera clean if a blower doesn't work. I also haven't had to clean my more modern cameras much at all, I think i cleaned by 5d2 once or twice ever. You would definitely want to watch some videos on the process.
Thanks for reply. You are right of course - it is a spot of some sort on the sensor. I was confused because a dark spot appeared in the viewfinder at about the same time, and in almost exactly the same place - but on careful checking, not quite the same place, an unfortunate coincidence. I'll check out some of those cleaning videos.
