Dust Bunnies
Particles of dust, sticky pollen, and whatnot somewhere worm their
way inside your camera and cling to your sensor. The results are
little persistent spots on each and every photo you take. This is
particularly bad when focus stacking because as you focus closer
in that little dust-bunny spot becomes a long line on the finished
stacked photo or a bunch of lines which can be hard to remove.
You must keep your sensor clean for focus stacking.
[BriteVue
Quasar Sensor Loupe]
Sensor Cleaning
This is the ugliest part of digital camera work but you have to do it.
There are different levels of cleaning the sensor. On my Nikon
cameras I have to lock the mirror up, take off the lens, and look
inside. Behind where the mirror was (before it was locked up) is the
sensor actually covered by a Lithium Niobate filter which is pretty
tough and does not scratch easily. Still, doing anything with the
sensor requires care and can be nerve wracking.
For beginners (and occasionally for any of us) cleaning the sensor
is not only difficult but often fraught with worry about damaging the
camera’s sensor. It is no fun at all. The single most-important tool