Black Spots In Digital Photos

[zoezach]

Recently bought the XTi and have taken several great photos with it, however, after a while, I have been noticing on some of the photos, a black spot here and there. In very important spots such as hair, eyes, kind of blacked out. could I have messed up the settings somewhere and not know it. I am kind of new to the digital scene. I have tried 2 different printers, my home photo printer and the walmart kiosk.

[srdanz]

Can we take a look at a sample please? Would be easier to identify it if we could see an unprocessed image. post it here in this thread...

[guitarbug]

Rocket Blower! The best thing they make for getting dust bunnies out of camera.

[zoezach]

I will post just as soon as I can. thank you

[zoezach]

It isn't dust, it is some sort of pixel thing I think, color balance maybe. The eyes are perfectly blacked out or the hair in areas is blacked out. Really strange

[fivegrand]

Originally Posted by zoezach

Recently bought the XTi and have taken several great photos with it, however, after a while, I have been noticing on some of the photos, a black spot here and there. In very important spots such as hair, eyes, kind of blacked out. could I have messed up the settings somewhere and not know it. I am kind of new to the digital scene. I have tried 2 different printers, my home photo printer and the walmart kiosk.

Are you looking at the images in PS or similar, or just plugging the card into the printer and mashing the "go" button?

Doesn't sound like a camera issue to me as much as a dirty printer issue...Do the out-of-camera images have these aberrations as well, or only the prints? Are the defects always in the same tonal and shadow ranges?

[zoezach]

I did try the kiosk at Wal-mart in addition to my home printer and the output wasn't quite as bad, but you could still it was there. I was just plugging the card into the printer. However, the images look fine on the screen and on the computer. I will try and upload the image so it can be checked out; hopefully I can, this is my first posting so it may be a while. OK, I think I uploaded. Please let me know if I didn't. Thanks

[fivegrand]

The image didn't upload or attach or something...

Feel free to email it to me at

fgc at fivegrandcreative dot com

and I'll post it for you...

[zoezach]

Think this might work. Hopefully. The blacked out areas were in the ponytail area of this picture.

[brad]

Originally Posted by guitarbug

Rocket Blower! The best thing they make for getting dust bunnies out of camera.

Be careful with Rocket Blowers... blow them several times well away from the camera before blowing at your sensor. I had one that had water that had condensed on the inside (it went from a warm humid environment to a cold one suddenly) and it blew liquid up onto my sensor... was a PITA to get clean.

[fivegrand]

Ok...I see where you're talking about. It's not there on this version.

I go back to a printer issue.

I don't know what you've got at home that you're printing with, but I suggest that it may not have the capability to print the slight tonal variations between the dark hair, light hair, and the dark fabric of the chair in the background. OR you might not have it profiled ffor your camera/working color space etc. That gets to kind of splitting hairs for down-to-the-gnat's-eyelash accuracy.

Same goes for the Wallyworld printer. I'd bet it's filthy, and isn't the best critter out there, to begin with.

I'm confident that it's NOT your camera.

[zoezach]

thanks, that's what I thought, my printer is an HP photosmart. I am going to send some prints to a lab and see what results I get. Thanks for all your help

[fivegrand]

Well, that's a good printer line from what I understand...Can you clean it? It's probably just dirty...

[zoezach]

I think it has a self-cleaning tool, I will try that, maybe it will help. I have printed 8 x 10 prints on it in black and white and they are great. So maybe it just needs a little calibration.