D3 Sensor weirdness

[CBarrett]

I thought I had a few dust spots on my sensor and dropped the camera off with my dealer for cleaning.  The spots refused to budge and on closer inspection, they looked more like tiny air bubbles.  Also, Newton Rings are visible across the entirety of the sensor, causing me to believe that something is becoming delaminated.

Needless to say, my D3 has been sent back to Nikon.  At 6 months old with very little use, I expect this will fall under warranty.  Anybody ever run into anything like this before?  Is there a coating over the IR glass that might be separating?

Strange.

-CB

[250swb]

Oil on the sensor? Its a common problem, especially with new cameras before they settle down and bed in. Did your dealer do a wet clean or only try to remove loose dust? Rather than send it back to Nikon I would have tried a wet clean on it myself first. Newtons rings can also be caused by the cleaning fluid if the dealer hasn't done it right, or if they have just spread a bit of the oil around instead of getting it off completely.

Steve

[RHarmon]

I agree with Steve on this.  I bought a D3 about a year ago for a very specific job.  I shot over 10,000 images in the first 2 days of it's use, mostly at 9fps.  When the job was done, the sensor had oil spots all over it -- something I had not anticipated.  Nikon told me that the oil used in the shutter mechanism is at it's peak when the camera is new -- which, obviously,  makes sense.  It's very unusual for anyone (d'uh!) to shoot 10,000 frames at 9fps in 2 days when the camera is brand new, so they readily agreed that the amount of oil intentionally left in the shutter mechanism was way too much for my 'odd' use of the camera.

I was easily able to clean the sensor to spotless by using various "Visible Dust" products.  It took a few cleanings to get the oil off - they appeared exactly as you describe them -- but, in the end, no issue.

BTW, the D3 is phenomenal.  As a result of this 'odd job' I did, I sold all my Canon stuff and have happily moved to D3 and lots of great lenses.

Also, the Visible Dust stuff works very well.

Good luck!

Robert

[Tony Beach]

Yes, I ran into a related issue with my Sony A850.



This is probably not the same issue as yours, but it seems that there was space between the low pass filter and the sensor on my camera that allowed dust in that gap and then moisture got in there when I was attempting to remove the dust spots that I had presumed were on the surface of the low pass filter.   I was using  E2, which I recommend not using; I'm going back to the original Eclipse from now on because it has less water in it and therefore evaporates more quickly.

When I asked Thom Hogan about this, he said, "Yes, I’ve seen it before. Not on recent Nikons, though, because Nikon went to a frame system that closes the air gap."

On a positive note (for me), my camera is on its way back from Sony, and I was not charged or hassled over this, and it was in and out of the shop in a couple of days.  I hope your experience with Nikon is as relatively painless as mine was with Sony, and I would be interested to read a follow-up from you on how long it takes to resolve and what the diagnosis is (my guess is you will never find out anything specific on what the problem is).