A Shootout between Dust Removal Systems

Here is a systematic shootout between the four dust removal systems from Pentax, Canon, Olympus and Sony, for the K10D, 400D, E-300 and A100 respectively:-

http://pixinfo.com/en/articles/ccd-dust-removal/

I won't particularly comment further as the review article above is self-explanatory. The test results are quite distinct and I must agree with the conclusion made.

Nevertheless, what the test tells match exactly with my previous research findings about the (in)effectiveness of the Pentax's DR system used in the K10D:- RiceHigh's Pentax Blog: Reports on In-effective Dust Removal of K10D Continue. The stories coincide.

So, next time when certain Pentaxians are still asking me, "What's the fuss about?", for what I report, I think anyone would better to see all the provided information and evidence first, before one is to ask a similar question, or even to over-react. :-)

By the way, Pentax do have some real DR solution themselves. I bet the reason for why they put a Sony A100 DR "solution" clone in their K10D would be purely owing to cost and time concern which required nearly zero for both as the AS/SR system is already there and ready to "shake off the dust", but actually it is something "useless" as verified. Whilst some Sony and Pentax users are very disappointed, I'm afraid that the original marketing claims turn into market lies in the eyes of those disappointed users, indeed.

Okay, let's have a look at the potential real thing from Pentax, which of course will need additional facilities to do the job, as there is no free lunch on Earth! Here is a Pentax filed patent:-

http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=JP2005354330&F=0

As you can see, the method uses suction air to remove dust particles out of the camera body, completely. I bet it will be close to the effectiveness of using an air blower, which this level of cleanness will undoubtedly surpass the existing Olympus design, as seen in the shootout experiment above and it has been shown that air-blower is a very effective mean for removing dust particles. Nonetheless, the perfect cleaning is still only achieveable by wet cleaning, i.e., swapping the sensor with cleansing fluid.