You won’t expend a lot of effort keeping your Nikon D3400 humming and operating smoothly. There’s not a lot that can go wrong. An electronically controlled camera like the Nikon D3400 has fewer mechanical moving parts to fail, so they are less likely to “wear out.” There is no film transport mechanism, no wind lever or motor drive, and, when using lenses with the AF-S designation (as described in Chapter 10), no complicated mechanical linkages from camera to lens to adjust the automatic focus. Instead, tiny, reliable motors are built into each lens (and you lose the use of only that lens should something fail), and one of the few major moving parts in the camera itself is a lightweight mirror (its small size is one of the advantages of the D3400’s 1.5X crop factor) that flips up and down with each shot.

Of course, the camera also has a moving shutter that can fail, but the shutter is built rugged enough that, even though Nikon doesn’t provide an official toughness “rating,” many users of previous Nikon entry-level cameras have reported 100,000 trouble-free shutter cycles or more. Unless you’re shooting sports in Continuous mode day in and day out, the shutter on your D3400 is likely to last as long as you expect to use the camera.

The only other things on the camera that move are switches, dials, buttons, the flip-up electronic flash, and the door that slides open to allow you to remove and insert the Secure Digital card. Unless you’re extraordinarily clumsy or unlucky and manage to give your built-in flash a good whack while it is in use, there’s not a lot that can go wrong mechanically with your Nikon D3400.

There are numerous electrical and electronic connections in the camera (many connected to those mechanical switches and dials), and components like the color LCD that can potentially fail or suffer damage. You must contend with dust lodging itself on your sensor, and, from time to time, perhaps the need to periodically update your camera’s internal software, called firmware. This chapter will show you how to diagnose problems, fix some common ills, and, importantly, learn how to avoid many of them in the future.

Battery Powered

One of the chief liabilities of modern electronic cameras is that they are modern electronic cameras. Your D3400 is fully dependent on two different batteries. Without them, the camera can’t be used. Photographers from both the film and digital eras have grown used to this limitation, and I’ve grown to live with the need for batteries even though I shot for years using all-mechanical Nikon cameras that had no batteries (or even a built-in light meter!). The need for electrical power is the price we pay for modern conveniences like autofocus, autoexposure, LCD image display, backlit menus, and, of course, digital images.

One of the batteries you rely on is the EN-EL14a battery installed in the grip. It’s rechargeable, can last for as long as 1,200 shots or more, and is user-replaceable if you have a spare. The second power cell in your camera is a so-called clock battery, which is also rechargeable, but is tucked away within the innards of the camera and can’t be replaced by the user. The clock battery retains the settings of the camera when it’s powered down, and, even, when the main battery is removed for charging. If you remove the EN-EL14a for long periods, the clock battery may discharge, but it will be quickly rejuvenated when you replace the main battery. (It’s recharged by juice supplied by the EN-EL14a.) Although you can’t replace this battery yourself, you can expect it to last for the useful life of the camera.

So, your main concern will be to provide a continuous, reliable source of power for your D3400. As I noted in Chapter 1, you should always have a spare battery or two so you won’t need to stop shooting when your internal battery dies. I recommend buying Nikon-brand batteries: saving $20 or so for an after-market battery may seem like a good deal, but it can cost you much more than that if the battery malfunctions and damages your camera.

Figure 12.1 Mark your memory cards—or batteries—so you’ll know which are ready for use.

Updating Your Firmware

The camera relies on its “operating system,” or firmware, which should be updated in a reasonable fashion as new releases become available. The firmware in your Nikon D3400 handles everything from menu display (including fonts, colors, and the actual entries themselves), what languages are available, and even support for specific devices and features. Upgrading the firmware to a new version makes it possible to add or fine-tune features while fixing some of the bugs that sneak in.

Firmware upgrades are used most frequently to fix bugs in the software, and much less frequently to add or enhance features. The exact changes made to the firmware are generally spelled out in the firmware release announcement. You can examine the remedies provided and decide if a given firmware patch is important to you. If not, you can usually safely wait a while before going through the bother of upgrading your firmware—at least long enough for the early adopters (such as those who haunt the Digital Photography Review forums at www.dpreview.com) to report whether the bug fixes have introduced new bugs of their own. Each new firmware release incorporates the changes from previous releases, so if you skip a minor upgrade you should have no problems.

How It Works

If you’re computer savvy, you might wonder how your Nikon D3400 is able to overwrite its own operating system—that is, how can the existing firmware be used to load the new version on top of itself? It’s a little like lifting yourself by reaching down and pulling up on your bootstraps. Not ironically, that’s almost exactly what happens: At your command (when you start the upgrade process), the D3400 shifts into a special mode in which it is no longer operating from its firmware but, rather, from a small piece of software called a bootstrap loader, a separate, protected software program that functions only at startup or when upgrading firmware. The loader’s function is to look for firmware to launch or, when directed, to copy new firmware from a Secure Digital card to the internal memory space where the old firmware is located.

The loader software isn’t set up to go hunting through your Secure Digital card for the firmware file. It looks only in the top or root directory of your card, so that’s where you must copy the firmware you download. Once you’ve determined that a new firmware update is available for your camera and that you want to install it, just follow these steps. (If you chicken out, any Nikon Service Center can install the firmware upgrade for you.)

Why Two Firmware Modules?

Your Nikon D3400’s firmware is divided into two parts, Firmware C (for camera) and Firmware LD (for lens distortion control data). (Nikon offers special S firmware for its Speedlights.) The firmware number can be found in the Firmware Version entry in the Setup menu.

Getting Ready

The first thing to do is determine whether you need the current firmware update. First, confirm the version number of your Nikon D3400’s current firmware:

1. Turn on the D3400.
2. Press the MENU button and select Firmware Version from the Setup menu. The camera’s firmware version will be displayed, as in Figure 12.2.
3. Write down the version number for Parts C and L.
4. Turn off the D3400.

Next, go to the Nikon support site, locate, and download the firmware update. In the USA, the place to go is http://support.nikontech.com/, and search for firmware from there. Click that link, then click the DSLR link on the page displayed next. Scroll down to the D3400 row in the table, and review the version number for the current update.

Figure 12.2 View your current firmware versions before upgrading.

If the version is later than the one you noted in your camera, click the firmware link in either the Windows or Macintosh columns (depending on your computer) to download the file. It will have a name like D3400Update.zip (Windows) or D3400update.sitx (Macintosh). Extract the file to a folder on your computer using the unzipping or unstuffing software of your choice.

Nikon has recently been making some changes to its firmware updating procedure, and there have been none so far for the D3400 as I write this, so be sure to check with Nikon for their latest recommendations. The following description has worked for previous cameras.

The D3400’s firmware may come in two parts, C and L, which can be updated individually, or you might be offered a single file that contains all the firmware updates. After you’ve extracted the firmware files, the actual update files will be named something like:

D3400_0100.bin

The final preparation you need to make is to decide whether you’d like to upgrade your firmware using a memory card reader, or by transferring the software to the D3400 using the USB cable. In either case, you’ll need to format a memory card in the D3400. Then, perform one of the sets of steps in the sections that follow.

Updating from a Card Reader

To update from a card reader, use a reader connected to your computer with a USB cable. Then, follow these steps:

1. Insert a freshly formatted SD memory card clean of images into the card reader. If you have been using Nikon Transfer or the “autoplay” features of your operating system to transfer images from your memory card to the computer, the automated transfer dialog box may appear. Close it.
2. The memory card will appear on your Macintosh desktop, or in the Computer/My Computer folders under Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows 7/Windows Vista/Windows XP.
3. Drag one of the firmware files to the memory card. You can install “C” or “L” first (if more than one is provided). If your particular upgrade consists of only one of the two files, drag that to the memory card. Remember to copy the firmware to the root (top) directory of the memory card. The D3400 will be unable to find it if you place it in a folder.

Updating with a USB Connection

You can also copy the firmware to the D3400’s memory card using a USB connection. Just follow these steps:

1. With the camera turned off, insert the clean, newly formatted memory card. Then, turn the camera back on.
2. Turn off the D3400 and connect it to your computer using the USB cable, or another similar cable.
3. Turn the camera back on. If you have been using Nikon Transfer or the “autoplay” features of your operating system to transfer images from your memory card to the computer, the automated transfer dialog box may appear. Close it.
4. The camera will appear on the Macintosh desktop, or in the Computer/My Computer folders under Windows 8/Windows 7/Windows Vista/Windows XP.
5. Drag one of the firmware files to the memory card. It doesn’t matter whether you install “C” or “L” first. If your particular upgrade consists of only one .bin file, drag that to the memory card. Remember to copy the firmware to the root (top) directory of the memory card. The D3400 will be unable to find it if you place it in a folder.
6. Disconnect the camera from the computer.

Starting the Update

To perform the actual update, follow these steps:

1. With the memory card containing the firmware update software in the camera and a freshly recharged battery installed, turn the camera on.
2. Press the MENU button and select Firmware Version in the Setup menu.
3. Select Update and press the multi selector button to the right.
4. When the firmware update screen appears, highlight Yes and press OK to begin the update.
5. The actual process may take a few minutes (from two to five). Be sure not to turn off the camera or perform any other operations while it is underway. (See Figure 12.3.)
6. When the update is completed, the warning message will no longer be displayed on the screen. You can turn off the camera when the message disappears. (See Figure 12.4.)
7. Remove the memory card.
8. Turn the D3400 back on to load the updated firmware.
9. Press the MENU button and select Firmware version in the Setup menu to view the current firmware number. If it matches the update, you’ve successfully upgraded that portion of the firmware.
10. Reformat the memory card.
11. If there is a second part to your firmware upgrade (“C” or “L”), then repeat all the steps for the additional firmware software. (Nikon has been tending to supply only a single combined firmware file, so this step may not be necessary.)
12. Reformat the memory card to return it to a “clean” condition.

Figure 12.3 Don’t turn the camera off while updating is underway.

Figure 12.4 Turn the camera off when update is finished.

Protecting Your LCD

The large 3-inch color LCD monitor on the back of your Nikon D3400 almost seems like a target for banging, scratching, and other abuse. The LCD itself is quite rugged, and a few errant knocks are unlikely to shatter the protective cover over the LCD, and scratches won’t easily mar its surface. However, if you want to be on the safe side, there are a number of protective products you can purchase to keep your LCD safe—and, in some cases, make it a little easier to view.

Here’s a quick overview of your other options, some of which are likely to add enough thickness to your LCD to prevent you from reversing the LCD when you need to. That’s a choice you’ll have to make.

• Plastic overlays. The simplest solution (although not always the cheapest), is to apply a plastic overlay sheet or “skin” cut to fit your LCD monitor. These adhere either by static electricity or through a light adhesive coating that’s even less clingy than stick-it notes. You can cut down overlays made for PDAs (although these can be pricey at up to $19.95 for a set of several sheets), or purchase overlays sold specifically for digital cameras. These products will do a good job of shielding your D3400’s LCD screen from scratches and minor impacts, but will not offer much protection from a good whack.
• Acrylic/glass shields. These scratch-resistant acrylic panels, laser cut to fit your camera perfectly, are my choice as the best protection solution, and what I use on my own D3400. At about $10–$16 each, they also happen to be the least expensive option as well. I prefer GGS screens (shown in Figure 12.4), available from a wide variety of sources on Amazon, eBay, and from other retailers. They don’t attenuate your view of the LCD monitor and are non-reflective enough for use under a variety of lighting conditions.

Figure 12.5 A tough glass shield can protect your LCD monitor from scratches.

Troubleshooting Memory Cards

Sometimes good memory cards go bad. Sometimes good photographers can treat their memory cards badly. It’s possible that a memory card that works fine in one camera won’t be recognized when inserted into another. In the worst case, you can have a card full of important photos and find that the card seems to be corrupted and you can’t access any of them. Don’t panic! If these scenarios sound horrific to you, there are lots of things you can do to prevent them from happening, and a variety of remedies available if they do occur. You’ll want to take some time—before disaster strikes—to consider your options.

All Your Eggs in One Basket?

The debate about whether it’s better to use one large memory card or several smaller ones has been going on since even before there were memory cards. I can remember when computer users wondered whether it was smarter to install a pair of 200MB (not gigabyte) hard drives in their computer, or if they should go for one of those new-fangled 500MB models. By the same token, a few years ago the user groups were full of proponents who insisted that you ought to use 128MB memory cards rather than the huge 512MB versions. Today, most of the arguments involve 8GB cards versus 16GB or 32GB cards, and I expect that as prices for 64GB SD cards continue to drop, they’ll find their way into the debate as well, because images from 24-megapixel cameras like the D3400 can quickly fill up smaller cards.

Why all the fuss? Are 16GB memory cards more likely to fail than 8GB cards? Are you risking all your photos if you trust your images to a larger card? Isn’t it better to use several smaller cards, so that if one fails you lose only half as many photos? Or, isn’t it wiser to put all your photos onto one larger card, because the more cards you use, the better your odds of misplacing or damaging one and losing at least some pictures?

In the end, the “eggs in one basket” argument boils down to statistics, and how you happen to use your D3400. The rationales can go both ways. If you have multiple smaller cards, you do increase your chances of something happening to one of them, so, arguably, you might be boosting the odds of losing some pictures. If all your images are important, the fact that you’ve lost 100 rather than 200 pictures isn’t very comforting.

Also, consider that the eggs/basket scenario assumes that the cards that are lost or damaged are always full. It’s actually likely that your 16GB card might suffer a mishap when it’s less than half full (indeed, it’s more likely that a large card won’t be completely filled before it’s offloaded to a computer), so you really might not lose any more shots with a single 16GB card than with multiple 4GB or 8GB cards.

If you shoot photojournalist-type pictures, you probably change memory cards when they’re less than completely full in order to avoid the need to do so at a crucial moment. (When I shoot sports, my cards rarely reach 80 to 90 percent of capacity before I change them.) Using multiple smaller cards means you have to change them that more often, which can be a real pain when you’re taking a lot of photos. As an example, if you use 1GB memory cards with a Nikon D3400 and shoot RAW+JPEG Fine, you may get only a few dozen pictures on the card. That’s not even twice the capacity of a 36-exposure roll of film (remember those?). In my book, I prefer keeping all my eggs in one basket, and then making very sure that nothing happens to that basket.

The other reason comes into play when every single picture is precious to you and the loss of any of them would be a disaster. If you’re a wedding photographer, for example, and unlikely to be able to restage the nuptials if a memory card goes bad, you’ll probably want to shoot no more pictures than you can afford to lose on a single card, and have an assistant ready to copy each card removed from the camera onto a backup hard drive or DVD onsite.

What Can Go Wrong?

There are lots of things that can go wrong with your memory card, but the ones that aren’t caused by human stupidity are statistically very rare. Yes, a Secure Digital card’s internal bit bin or controller can suddenly fail due to a manufacturing error or some inexplicable event caused by old age. However, if your SD card works for the first week or two that you own it, it should work forever. There’s really not a lot that can wear out.

The typical Secure Digital card is rated for a Mean Time Between Failures of 1,000,000 hours of use. That’s constant use 24/7 for more than 100 years! According to the manufacturers, they are good for 10,000 insertions in your camera, and should be able to retain their data (and that’s without an external power source) for something on the order of 11 years. Of course, with the millions of SD cards in use, there are bound to be a few lemons here or there.

Given the reliability of solid-state memory compared to magnetic memory, though, it’s more likely that your Secure Digital problems will stem from something that you do. SD cards are small and easy to misplace if you’re not careful. For that reason, it’s a good idea to keep them in their original cases or a “card safe” offered by Gepe (www.gepecardsafe.com), Pelican (www.pelican.com), and others. Always placing your memory card in a case can provide protection from the second-most common mishap that befalls Secure Digital cards: the common household laundry. If you slip a memory card in a pocket, rather than a case or your camera bag often enough, sooner or later it’s going to end up in the washing machine and probably the clothes dryer, too. There are plenty of reports of relieved digital camera owners who’ve laundered their memory cards and found they still worked fine, but it’s not uncommon for such mistreatment to do some damage.

Memory cards can also be stomped on, accidentally bent, dropped into the ocean, chewed by pets, and otherwise rendered unusable in myriad ways. Or, if the card is formatted in your computer with a memory card reader, your D3400 may fail to recognize it. Occasionally, I’ve found that a memory card used in one camera would fail if used in a different camera (until I reformatted it in Windows, and then again in the camera). Every once in awhile, a card goes completely bad and—seemingly—can’t be salvaged.

Another way to lose images is to do commonplace things with your SD card at an inopportune time. If you remove the card from the D3400 while the camera is writing images to the card, you’ll lose any photos in the buffer and may damage the file structure of the card, making it difficult or impossible to retrieve the other pictures you’ve taken. The same thing can happen if you remove the SD card from your computer’s card reader while the computer is writing to the card (say, to erase files you’ve already moved to your computer). You can avoid this by not using your computer to erase files on a Secure Digital card but, instead, always reformatting the card in your D3400 before you use it again.

What Can You Do?

Pay attention: If you’re having problems, the first thing you should do is stop using that memory card. Don’t take any more pictures. Don’t do anything with the card until you’ve figured out what’s wrong. Your second line of defense (your first line is to be sufficiently careful with your cards that you avoid problems in the first place) is to do no harm that hasn’t already been done. Read the rest of this section and then, if necessary, decide on a course of action (such as using a data recovery service or software, described later) before you risk damaging the data on your card further.

Now that you’ve calmed down, the first thing to check is whether you’ve actually inserted a card in the camera. If you’ve set the camera so that the No Memory Card? option has been set to allow taking pictures without a card, it’s entirely possible (although not particularly plausible) that you’ve been snapping away with no memory card to store the pictures to, which can lead to massive disappointment later on. You can avoid all this by setting the Slot Empty Release Lock in the Setup menu to Release Locked, and leaving it there.

Things get more exciting when the card itself is put in jeopardy. If you lose a card, there’s not a lot you can do other than take a picture of a similar card and print up some “Have You Seen This Lost Flash Memory?” flyers to post on utility poles all around town.

If all you care about is reusing the card, and have resigned yourself to losing the pictures, try reformatting the card in your camera. You may find that reformatting removes the corrupted data and restores your card to health. Sometimes I’ve had success reformatting a card in my computer using a memory card reader (this is normally a no-no because your operating system doesn’t understand the needs of your D3400), and then reformatting again in the camera.

If your Secure Digital card is not behaving properly, and you do want to recover your images, things get a little more complicated. If your pictures are very valuable, either to you or to others (for example, a wedding), you can always turn to professional data recovery firms. Be prepared to pay hundreds of dollars to get your pictures back, but these pros often do an amazing job. You wouldn’t want them working on your memory card on behalf of the police if you’d tried to erase some incriminating pictures. There are many firms of this type, but I’ve never used them myself, so I can’t offer a recommendation. Use a Google search to turn up a ton of them.

A more reasonable approach is to try special data recovery software you can install on your computer and use to attempt to resurrect your “lost” images yourself. They may not actually be gone completely. Perhaps your SD card’s “table of contents” is jumbled, or only a few pictures are damaged in such a way that your camera and computer can’t read some or any of the pictures on the card. Some of the available software was written specifically to reconstruct lost pictures, while other utilities are more general-purpose applications that can be used with any media, including floppy disks and hard disk drives. They have names like OnTrack, Photo Rescue 2, Digital Image Recovery, MediaRecover, Image Recall, and the aptly named Recover My Photos. I like the RescuePRO software that SanDisk supplies, especially since it came on a mini-CD that was impossible to erase by mistake.

Preventive Measures

Here are some options for preventing loss of valuable images:

• Interleaving. One option is to interleave your shots. Say you don’t shoot weddings, but you do go on vacation from time to time. Take 50 or so pictures on one card, or whatever number of images might fill about 25 percent of its capacity. Then, replace it with a different card and shoot about 25 percent of that card’s available space. Repeat these steps with diligence (you’d have to be determined to go through this inconvenience), and, if you use four or more memory cards you’ll find your pictures from each location scattered among the different memory cards. If you lose or damage one, you’ll still have some pictures from all the various stops on your trip on the other cards. That’s more work than I like to do (I usually tote around a portable hard disk and copy the files to the drive as I go), but it’s an option.
• Transmit your images. Another option is to transmit your images, as they are shot, over a network to your laptop, assuming a network and a laptop are available. A company called Eye-Fi (www.eyefi.com) markets a clever Secure Digital card with wireless capabilities built in. They currently offer several models, from about $50 to less than $100, which can be used to transmit your photos from the D3400 to a computer on your home network (or any other network you set up somewhere, say, at a family reunion). You can also upload your images from your camera through your computer network directly to websites such as Flickr, Facebook, Shutterfly, Nikon’s own My Picturetown, and digital printing services that include Walmart Digital Photo Center.
• External backup. You can purchase external hard disk gadgets called Personal Storage Devices, which can copy files from your memory cards automatically. More expensive models have color LCD screens so you can review your images. I tend to prefer using a netbook or ultrabook, like the one shown in Figure 12.6. I can store images on the ultrabook’s internal hard disk, and make an extra backup copy to an external drive as well. Plus, I can access the Internet from Wi-Fi hotspots, all using a very compact device. Lately, I’ve been backing up many images on my iPad, which has 64GB of storage—enough for short trips.

Figure 12.6 A small ultrabook, with or without an external hard drive, is another backup option.

Cleaning Your Sensor

There’s no avoiding dust. No matter how careful you are, some of it is going to settle on your camera and on the mounts of your lenses, eventually making its way inside your camera to settle in the mirror chamber. As you take photos, the mirror flipping up and down causes the dust to become airborne and eventually make its way past the shutter curtain to come to rest atop your sensor. There, dust and particles can show up in every single picture you take at a small enough aperture to bring the foreign matter into sharp focus. No matter how careful you are and how cleanly you work, eventually you will get some of this dust on your camera’s sensor.

While the D3400 does not include an automatic sensor removal system like other Nikon dSLRs, it’s easy to remove these artifacts manually. If some dust does collect on your sensor, you can often map it out of your images (making it invisible) using software techniques with the Image Dust Off Ref feature in the Setup menu. Operation of this feature is described in Chapter 5. This section explains the phenomenon and provides some tips on minimizing dust and eliminating it when it begins to affect your shots.

Dust the FAQs, Ma’am

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about sensor dust issues.

Q. I see tiny specks in my viewfinder. Do I have dust on my sensor?

A. If you see sharp, well-defined specks, they are clinging to the underside of your focus screen and not on your sensor. They have absolutely no effect on your photographs, and are merely annoying or distracting.

Q. I can see dust on my mirror. How can I remove it?

A. Like focus-screen dust, any artifacts that have settled on your mirror won’t affect your photos. You can often remove dust on the mirror or focus screen with a bulb air blower, which will loosen it and whisk it away. Stubborn dust on the focus screen can sometimes be gently flicked away with a soft brush designed for cleaning lenses. I don’t recommend brushing the mirror or touching it in any way. The mirror is a special front-surface-silvered optical device (unlike conventional mirrors, which are silvered on the back side of a piece of glass or plastic) and can be easily scratched. If you can’t blow mirror dust off, it’s best to just forget about it. You can’t see it in the viewfinder, anyway.

Q. I see a bright spot in the same place in all of my photos. Is that sensor dust?

A. You’ve probably got either a “hot” pixel or one that is permanently “stuck” due to a defect in the sensor. A hot pixel is one that shows up as a bright spot only during long exposures as the sensor warms. A pixel stuck in the “on” position always appears in the image. Both show up as bright red, green, or blue pixels, usually surrounded by a small cluster of other improperly illuminated pixels, caused by the camera’s interpolating the hot or stuck pixel into its surroundings, as shown in Figure 12.7. A stuck pixel can also be permanently dark. Either kind is likely to show up when they contrast with plain, evenly colored areas of your image.

Figure 12.7 A stuck pixel is surrounded by improperly interpolated pixels created by the D3400’s demosaicing algorithm.

Finding one or two hot or stuck pixels in your sensor is unfortunately fairly common. They can be “removed” by telling the D3400 to ignore them through a simple process called pixel mapping. If the bad pixels become bothersome, Nikon can remap your sensor’s pixels with a quick trip to a service center.

Bad pixels can also show up on your camera’s color LCD panel, but, unless they are abundant, the wisest course is to just ignore them.

Q. I see an irregular out-of-focus blob in the same place in my photos. Is that sensor dust?

A. Yes. Sensor contaminants can take the form of tiny spots, larger blobs, or even curvy lines if they are caused by minuscule fibers that have settled on the sensor. They’ll appear out of focus because they aren’t actually on the sensor surface but, rather, a fraction of a millimeter above it on the filter that covers the sensor. The smaller the f/stop used, the more in-focus the dust becomes. At large apertures, it may not be visible at all.

Q. I never see any dust on my sensor. What’s all the fuss about?

A. Those who never have dust problems with their Nikon D3400 fall into one of four categories: those for whom the camera’s automatic dust removal features are working well; those who seldom change their lenses and have clean working habits that minimize the amount of dust that invades their cameras in the first place; those who simply don’t notice the dust (often because they don’t shoot many macro photos or other pictures using the small f/stops that makes dust evident in their images); and those who are very, very lucky.

Identifying and Dealing with Dust

Sensor dust is less of a problem than it might be because it shows up only under certain circumstances. Indeed, you might have dust on your sensor right now and not be aware of it. The dust doesn’t actually settle on the sensor itself, but, rather, on a protective filter a very tiny distance above the sensor, subjecting it to the phenomenon of depth-of-focus. Depth-of-focus is the distance the focal plane can be moved and still render an object in sharp focus. At f/2.8 to f/5.6 or even smaller, sensor dust, particularly if small, is likely to be outside the range of depth-of-focus and blur into an unnoticeable dot.

However, if you’re shooting at f/16 to f/22 or smaller, those dust motes suddenly pop into focus. Forget about trying to spot them by peering directly at your sensor with the shutter open and the lens removed. The period at the end of this sentence, about .33mm in diameter, could block a group of pixels measuring 40 × 40 pixels (160 pixels in all!). Dust spots that are even smaller than that can easily show up in your images if you’re shooting large, empty areas that are light colored. Dust motes are most likely to show up in the sky, as in Figure 12.8, or in white backgrounds of your seamless product shots and are less likely to be a problem in images that contain lots of dark areas and detail.

Figure 12.8 Only the dust spots in the sky are apparent in this shot.

To see if you have dust on your sensor, take a few test shots of a plain, blank surface (such as a piece of paper or a cloudless sky) at small f/stops, such as f/22, and a few wide open. Open Photoshop or another image editor, copy several shots into a single document in separate layers, then flip back and forth between layers to see if any spots you see are present in all layers. You may have to boost contrast and sharpness to make the dust easier to spot.

Avoiding Dust

Of course, the easiest way to protect your sensor from dust is to prevent it from settling on the sensor in the first place. Here are my stock tips for eliminating the problem before it begins.

• Clean environment. Avoid working in dusty areas if you can do so. Hah! Serious photographers will take this one with a grain of salt, because it usually makes sense to go where the pictures are. Only a few of us are so paranoid about sensor dust (considering that it is so easily removed) that we’ll avoid moderately grimy locations just to protect something that is, when you get down to it, just a tool. If you find a great picture opportunity at a raging fire, during a sandstorm, or while surrounded by dust clouds, you might hesitate to take the picture, but, with a little caution (don’t remove your lens in these situations, and clean the camera afterward!) you can still shoot. However, it still makes sense to store your camera in a clean environment. One place cameras and lenses pick up a lot of dust is inside a camera bag. Clean your bag from time to time, and you can avoid problems.
• Clean lenses. There are a few paranoid types that avoid swapping lenses in order to minimize the chance of dust getting inside their cameras. It makes more sense just to use a blower or brush to dust off the rear lens mount of the replacement lens first, so you won’t be introducing dust into your camera simply by attaching a new, dusty lens. Do this before you remove the current lens from your camera, and then avoid stirring up dust before making the exchange.
• Work fast. Minimize the time your camera is lens-less and exposed to dust. That means having your replacement lens ready and dusted off, and a place to set down the old lens as soon as it is removed, so you can quickly attach the new lens.
• Let gravity help you. Face the camera downward when the lens is detached so any dust in the mirror box will tend to fall away from the sensor. Turn your back to any breezes, indoor forced air vents, fans, or other sources of dust to minimize infiltration.
• Protect the lens you just removed. Once you’ve attached the new lens, quickly put the end cap on the one you just removed to reduce the dust that might fall on it.
• Clean out the vestibule. From time to time, remove the lens while in a relatively dust-free environment and use a blower bulb like the one shown in Figure 12.9 (not compressed air or a vacuum hose) to clean out the mirror box area. A blower bulb is generally safer than a can of compressed air, or a strong positive/negative airflow, which can tend to drive dust further into nooks and crannies.

Figure 12.9 Use a robust air bulb for cleaning your sensor.

• Be prepared. If you’re embarking on an important shooting session, it’s a good idea to clean your sensor now, rather than come home with hundreds or thousands of images with dust spots caused by flecks that were sitting on your sensor before you even started. Before I left on my most recent trip to Spain, I put both cameras I was taking through a rigid cleaning regimen, figuring they could remain dust-free for a measly 10 days. I even left my bulky blower bulb at home, and took along a new, smaller version for emergencies.
• Clone out existing spots in your image editor. Photoshop and other editors have a clone tool or healing brush you can use to copy pixels from surrounding areas over the dust spot or dead pixel. This process can be tedious, especially if you have lots of dust spots and/or lots of images to be corrected. The advantage is that this sort of manual fix-it probably will do the least damage to the rest of your photo. Only the damaged pixels will be affected.
• Use filtration in your image editor. A semi-smart filter like Photoshop’s Dust & Scratches filter can remove dust and other artifacts by selectively blurring areas that the plug-in decides represent dust spots. This method can work well if you have many dust spots, because you won’t need to patch them manually. However, any automated method like this has the possibility of blurring areas of your image that you didn’t intend to soften.

Sensor Cleaning

Those new to the concept of sensor dust actually hesitate before deciding to clean their camera themselves. Isn’t it a better idea to pack up your D3400 and send it to a Nikon service center so their crack technical staff can do the job for you? Or, at the very least, shouldn’t you let the friendly folks at your local camera store do it?

Of course, if you choose to let someone else clean your sensor, they will be using methods that are more or less identical to the techniques you would use yourself. None of these techniques are difficult, and the only difference between their cleaning and your cleaning is that they might have done it dozens or hundreds of times. If you’re careful, you can do just as good a job.

Of course vendors like Nikon won’t tell you this, but it’s not because they don’t trust you. It’s not that difficult for a real goofball to mess up their camera by hurrying or taking a shortcut. Perhaps the person uses the “Bulb” method of holding the shutter open and a finger slips, allowing the shutter curtain to close on top of a sensor cleaning brush. Or, someone tries to clean the sensor using masking tape, and ends up with goo all over its surface. If Nikon recommended any method that’s mildly risky, someone would do it wrong, and then the company would face lawsuits from those who’d contend they did it exactly in the way the vendor suggested, so the ruined camera is not their fault.

You can see that vendors like Nikon tend to be conservative in their recommendations, and, in doing so, make it seem as if sensor cleaning is more daunting and dangerous than it really is. Some vendors recommend only dust-off cleaning, through the use of reasonably gentle blasts of air, while condemning more serious scrubbing with swabs and cleaning fluids. However, these cleaning kits for the exact types of cleaning they recommended against are for sale in Japan, where, apparently, your average photographer is more dexterous than those of us in the rest of the world. These kits are similar to those used by official repair staff to clean your sensor if you decide to send your camera in for a dust-up.

As I noted, sensors can be affected by dust particles that are much smaller than you might be able to spot visually on the surface of your lens. The filters that cover sensors tend to be fairly hard compared to optical glass. Cleaning the 23.5mm × 15.6mm sensor in your Nikon D3400 within the tight confines of the mirror box can call for a steady hand and careful touch. If your sensor’s filter becomes scratched through inept cleaning, you can’t simply remove it yourself and replace it with a new one.

There are four basic kinds of cleaning processes that can be used to remove dusty and sticky stuff that settles on your dSLR’s sensor. All of these must be performed with the shutter locked open. I’ll describe these methods and provide instructions for locking the shutter later in this section.

• Air cleaning. This process involves squirting blasts of air inside your camera with the shutter locked open. This works well for dust that’s not clinging stubbornly to your sensor.
• Brushing. A soft, very fine brush is passed across the surface of the sensor’s filter, dislodging mildly persistent dust particles and sweeping them off the imager.
• Liquid cleaning. A soft swab dipped in a cleaning solution such as ethanol is used to wipe the sensor filter, removing more obstinate particles.

Placing the Mirror/Shutter in the Locked and Fully Upright Position for Landing

Make sure you’re using a fully charged battery or an AC adapter. Fortunately, the Nikon D3400 is smart enough that it won’t let you try to clean the sensor manually unless the battery has a sufficient charge.

1. Remove the lens from the camera and then turn on the camera.
2. You’ll find the Lock Mirror Up for Cleaning menu choice in the Setup menu. Select it.
3. Choose Start. The mirror will flip up and the shutter will open.
4. Use one of the methods described below to remove dust and grime from your sensor. Be careful not to accidentally switch the power off or open the Secure Digital card or battery compartment doors as you work. If that happens, the shutter may be damaged if it closes onto your cleaning tool.
5. When you’re finished, turn off the power, replace your lens, and switch your camera back on.

Air Cleaning

Your first attempts at cleaning your sensor should always involve gentle blasts of air. Many times, you’ll be able to dislodge dust spots, which will fall off the sensor and, with luck, out of the mirror box. Attempt one of the other methods only when you’ve already tried air cleaning and it didn’t remove all the dust.

Here are some tips for doing air cleaning:

• Use a clean, powerful air bulb. Your best bet is bulb cleaners designed for the job, like the Giottos Rocket. Smaller bulbs, like those air bulbs with a brush attached sometimes sold for lens cleaning or weak nasal aspirators may not provide sufficient air or a strong enough blast to do much good.
• Hold the camera upside down. Then look up into the mirror box as you squirt your air blasts, increasing the odds that gravity will help pull the expelled dust downward, away from the sensor. You may have to use some imagination in positioning yourself. (See Figure 12.9, earlier, which illustrates how I clean my Nikon D3400.)
• Never use air canisters. The propellant inside these cans can permanently coat your sensor if you tilt the can while spraying. It’s not worth taking a chance.
• Avoid air compressors. Super-strong blasts of air are likely to force dust under the sensor filter.

Brush Cleaning

If your dust is a little more stubborn and can’t be dislodged by air alone, you may want to try a brush, charged with static electricity, which can pick off dust spots by electrical attraction. One good, but expensive, option is the Arctic Butterfly sold at www.visibledust.com. A motor built into the brush is used to “flutter” the tip for a few seconds prior to cleaning (see Figure 12.10, left), charging the brush’s anti-static properties. Then, the motor is turned off (Figure 12.10, right) and the brush tip is passed above the surface of the sensor. (It’s not necessary to touch the sensor.) The dust is attracted to the brush and removed by another quick flutter once you’ve removed the brush from the mirror chamber. A cheaper, inanimate, sensor cleaning brush can be purchased from a wide variety of online sources and many retailers. (See Figure 12.11.) You need a 16mm version. It can be stroked across the short dimension of your D3400’s sensor.

Ordinary artist’s brushes are much too coarse and stiff and have fibers that are tangled or can come loose and settle on your sensor. A good sensor brush’s fibers are resilient and described as “thinner than a human hair.” Brush cleaning is done with a dry brush by gently swiping across the surface of the sensor filter with the tip. The dust particles are attracted to the brush particles and cling to them. You should clean the brush with compressed air before and after each use, and store it in an appropriate air-tight container between applications to keep it clean and dust-free. Although these special brushes are expensive, one should last you a long time.

Figure 12.10 A proper brush like this Arctic Butterfly is required for dusting off your sensor.

Figure 12.11 This brush includes a grounding lead to siphon off static electricity.

Liquid Cleaning

Unfortunately, you’ll often encounter really stubborn dust spots that can’t be removed with a blast of air or flick of a brush. These spots may be combined with some grease or a liquid that causes them to stick to the sensor filter’s surface. In such cases, liquid cleaning with a swab may be necessary. During my first clumsy attempts to clean my own sensor, I accidentally got my blower bulb tip too close to the sensor, and some sort of deposit from the tip of the bulb ended up on the sensor. I panicked until I discovered that liquid cleaning did a good job of removing whatever it was that took up residence on my sensor.

You want a sturdy swab that won’t bend or break so you can apply gentle pressure to the swab as you wipe the sensor surface. Use the swab with methanol (as pure as you can get it, particularly medical grade; other ingredients can leave a residue), or the Eclipse solution also sold by Photographic Solutions. Eclipse is actually quite a bit purer than even medical-grade methanol. A couple drops of solution should be enough, unless you have a spot that’s extremely difficult to remove. In that case, you may need to use extra solution on the swab to help “soak” the dirt off.

You can make your own swabs out of pieces of plastic (some use fast-food restaurant knives, with the tip cut at an angle to the proper size) covered with a soft cloth or Pec-Pad (available from photo retailers), as shown in Figure 12.12. However, if you’ve got the bucks to spend, you can’t go wrong with good-quality commercial sensor cleaning swabs.

Once you overcome your nervousness at touching your D3400’s sensor, the process is easy. You’ll wipe continuously with the swab in one direction, then flip it over and wipe in the other direction. You need to completely wipe the entire surface; otherwise, you may end up depositing the dust you collect at the far end of your stroke. Wipe; don’t rub.

Figure 12.12 Carefully wrap a Pec-Pad around a plastic knife that you’ve truncated.

Magnifier-Assisted Cleaning

Using a magnifier to view your sensor as you clean it is a good idea. I rely on two types. I have four Carson MiniBrite PO-55 magnifiers (see Figure 12.13), and keep one in each camera bag. So, no matter where I am shooting, I have one of these (roughly) $10 gadgets with me. You can read more about this great tool at my blog (http://dslrguides.com/carson/). When I’m not traveling, I use a SensorKlear loupe. It’s a magnifier with a built-in LED illuminator. There’s an opening on one side that allows you to insert a SensorKlear cleaning wand, a lens pen-like stylus with a surface treated to capture dust particles. (See Figure 12.14.) Both the SensorKlear loupe and the SensorKlear wand are available from www.lenspen.com.

Figure 12.13 The Carson MiniBrite is a good value sensor magnifier.

Figure 12.14 The SensorKlear loupe and its accompanying wand (not shown) allow quickly removing multiple dust particles.

When I’m using the MiniBrite, I locate the dust on the sensor with the magnifier, remembering that the position of the dust will be reversed from what I might have seen on an image on the camera’s LCD (because the camera lens flips the image when making the exposure). Then, I use the SensorKlear’s supplied wand or the blower/brush to remove the artifact.

The SensorKlear loupe actually allows you to keep your eye on the prize as you do the cleaning. You can peer through the viewer, rotate the opening to the side opposite the position of the dust, then insert the hinged wand to tap the dust while you’re watching. This method allows removing a bunch of dust particles quickly, so it’s my preferred procedure when I have the loupe with me.