Dust Reduction System in Digital Camera

Dust Reduction System refers to the technologies which partially solves the problem of accumulation of dust on the sensor of mid to high-end digital cameras. As was with Traditional Film SLR camera, we actually removed the ‘sensor’ by changing the film roll, but with Digital SLR, the sensor is fixed and obviously it faces the fine dust particles, for example while we change the lens. Dust Reduction System has been devised to reduce this issue.

Basics of Dust Reduction System

DSLRs are particularly has the chance to get dust on the sensor, since the sensor of the camera is fully opened during our lens changing process. Point and shoot cameras can get dust but the chance is less and mechanism of getting dust is different.

As can be understood, depending on aperture various size of the dust particles can add different effects on the end result; none of them are desired. So there are methods introduced by the camera manufacturers to fight against dust, cumulatively – Dust Reduction System.

Types of Dust Reduction System

 
Dust can bind through electrostatic charge or intermolecular force. The basic idea behind the Dust Reduction System is to add a thin transparent layer over the sensor and either making it electro-statically charged up to repel the dust particles or to vibrate it in high frequency.

Piezo crystal ultrasonic vibration of filter is an example where the thin filter surface that covers the image sensor vibrates at 35,000 to 50,000 Hertz. Sensor shifting is applied usually with electro-static repulsion. Sensor shifting shifts the sensor – that is, the sensor vibrates itself at very low frequency like 100-150 Hz.