Rest in Speech

Jamesburg, New Jersey - February 2009

I had an hour to kill in industrial New Jersey the other day, hard by the turnpike amongst the warehouse parks, railroad crossings and highway overpasses. I had come to Jamesburg to have the 5D evaluated before the warranty expired. The sensor needed cleaning, but what was bothering me was that the dirt pattern was exactly the same as it had been before I last had it serviced at the end of the summer.

I was afraid that there was either some bit of stray adhesive or a scratch on the sensor filter, and that the last cleaning had only removed the accumulated grit of the previous three months. If you click on the image at the right, you'll see what I'm talking about.

All the little dots are bits of dust on the sensor, they accumulate no matter how careful you are about changing lenses, and usually don't matter, unless you wind up with the kind of honkers that you can see I've got in the upper left quadrant. I'd had an identical pattern appear not long after I got the camera. The last cleaning seemed to have eliminated them, or so I thought until a few months afterward. Since then I've been eyeing the calendar, looking for free time before the warranty ran out. This week the stars aligned, so I made a print of the dirty image and headed toward Staten Island and beyond.

Holy Trinity Cemetery, Jamesburg - February 2009

I'm glad I came when I did, given there was a sign on the door announcing that beginning March 6th sensor cleanings would now cost $30, rather than the previous nothing. I'm in CPS, Canon Professional Services, though, which entitles me to a few extras, like rush service and free overnight shipping. I left the camera for them to look at, after detailing the problem (and leaving the print).

I didn't expect they'd examine it and have an answer in an hour, though, and without a map or any clue I drove three miles west, then three miles east. I was ready to stop for coffee when I spotted this cemetery. Fairly recent, the earliest burials are around the early fifties. The majority of the family names are Polish, and for the most part completely unpronounceable.

I thought the Verb family had an interesting stone, that and the cherubic angel caught my infrared eye.

Oh, and the dirty camera? There's a scratch on the filter over the sensor. They'll replace the filter, clean the camera and overnight it to me next week.