dustgate

In October 2012, LensRentals owner Roger Cicala reported that the Nikon D600 seems to collect more sensor dust than other DSLRs. Other owners began reporting the same thing, and different theories began emerging to explain the origins of the annoying specks.

When Imaging Resource reached out to Nikon for comment, it was told that Nikon customers are encouraged to have their cameras serviced if the dust becomes "bothersome." Nikon finally issued an official advisory this past Wednesday regarding the issue, but its message is the same.

Photographer Kyle Clements' time-lapse showing specks accumulating on the Nikon D600 over the first 1000 shots has been seen by nearly 200,000 people around the web in less than a week. Through the exposure his experiment has gotten, Clements received a good deal of feedback and suggestions regarding further experiments and what the specks might be. He has since done two new time-lapse experiments that sheds a little more light on the issue.

The whole situation surrounding Nikon's D600 dust issue is turning out to be eerily similar to Apple's iPhone 5 purple haze problem. In both situations, there are people who are very bothered by the "flaw", people who wonder what all the fuss is about and believe the complaints to be overblown, and a slow response from the companies. Now Nikon is also doing exactly what Apple did: respond to complaints saying that what users are seeing is normal.

It has been widely reported that the new Nikon D600 full-frame DSLR suffers from a higher-than-normal amount of dark spots appearing on the sensor. Yesterday we shared one photographer's time-lapse video that demonstrates that the issue occurs right out of the box without any lens swaps.

Photographer Daniel Gaworski has been experiencing the same problem, and decided to take a closer look at his D600. He discovered that his camera's shutter curtain contains scratch marks on the bottom flap (see above), particularly in one corner of the camera.

Back in October, we wrote that the Nikon D600 suffers from excessive sensor dust in the upper left hand corner of the frame -- something many owners have been reporting and a flaw confirmed by review sites such as DPReview. Toronto-based artist Kyle Clements wanted to test this himself, so he bought a new D600, pointed it at a white piece of paper, shot 1000 frames, and created the time-lapse video above.