Oil spots on D7000 sensor

<p>Anyone hear anything about this? I read it over at dpreview this morning, but for once haven't experienced the issue myself. Bruce</p>

<p>My first D7000, although clean when new, ended up with bad oil staining on the sensor after a week of use. I returned it for a replacement which has so far behaved itself. </p>

<p>Appears to be one of those things that pops up after a while of use, making a warranty/return remedy a bit more difficult.</p>

<p>Bruce, Nikon is selling D7000 in huge numbers. Once back in March my local Costco had a large stack of D7000 with kit lens boxes; they were all gone after a week, just to give you an example.</p>

<p>If you search through various internet forums, I have no doubt that you will find some isolated reports of various issues, as you can on just about any popular camera model. As far as I can tell, the D7000 is doing fine in general; there is certainly no wide-spread problems such as the D5000's circuit-board issue that required a prompt recall.</p>

<p>I bought my D7000 very early, in November 2010. I currently have about 16K shutter actuations on it after 8 months. A month ago I took it to the Galapagos Islands; in 2.5 weeks I captured about 9K images; that was right on the equator under very hot conditions, and I shot through some light rain also.</p>

<p> So far it is working perfectly, way beyond my expectations for a $1200 camera.</p>

<p>Yeah I'm certainly pleased that I haven't had any problems of the types I've been reading about from time to time. No hot pixels, no oil spots, no overexposure, at least once I understood what the camera was doing, thanks to testcams.com etc, etc. Bruce</p>

<p>I do follow the forums on dpreview as well. And when you believe everything you read there, the D7000 must be a very bad product.</p>

<p>I had mine cleaned by a Nikon Pro dealer (I did change lenses in a very dusty environment and had a lot of dust on the sensor) and talked with him about all those "problems". Well, the oil spots did actually happen. He had seen a few but after cleaning didn't see it re-occurring. According to him, there have been several problems with the first 100,000 or so.<br>

And there are still some new ones with problems, but it's no more then the other brands (Canon, Sony, etc) have.</p>

<p>Mine is working perfectly and currently clean again.</p>

<p>Oily spots (smears) on sensors do sometimes happen but I thought it was only an issue with (Canon) full frame models. I've had this on the 5D, did not return after (wet) cleaning.<br>

Forget DPreview forums. it takes too long to filter out the useful information between all irrelevant or simply wrong info.</p>

<p>I assume Bruce Campbell is referring to this thread over on DPReview forums: <a href="http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=38856537">http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=38856537</a></p>

<p><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=24548">Steve Bingham</a> is now accusing the OP over there for making up these complaints. Who knows where the truth lies. We are also familiar with Bingham here on photo.net.</p>

<p>I am definitely having problems with oil spots on the sensor. There are now more than 100 spots on the tests that I do to determine this. I only keep one lens on the camera (18-200 VR), so no new dust has a way of getting onto the low-pass filter. I've been a professional photographer since 1979, so I know what I see. I've seen what dust looks like and these are droplets of some kind of liquid. I have been onto many forums and a lot of other D7000 owners are having the same problem, but there are also other who are not having this problem. Talked to someone at a Nikon-authorized repair shop, and they believe it's coming from the mirror box.</p>

<p>I had the oil problem with my D3, after about 1,000 exposures and a couple wet cleanings, it never appeared again. I believe it was just over oiled at the factory. The problem is easy to take care of and I certainly wouldn't return a camera because of it.<br>

Dennis</p>