Cleaning a D7100 Sensor

Spy_Black

Being as the new D7100 will not have an AA filter as a buffer of sorts above the sensor, how does one go about cleaning it? Whether it will suffer the fate of the D600 or not, sooner or later the sensor will need cleaning. It is my understanding that there are individual lenses at every photosite, like you can see here:


So is this area exposed in such an arrangement as there is in the D7100, or is there yet another element above them? If those photosites are fully exposed, cleaning them would be a total nightmare, because there would be literally millions of nooks and crannies to get dirty, and you could make things far worse just trying to clean them.

Curious.

ChromiumPrime

You would clean it like you would any other camera sensor. It will still have a filter in front of the sensor just not an anti-aliasing filter... just like the D800E.

donaldejose

Not a "million nooks and crannies." More like 24 million times 4 (on each side of the micro lens) for a total of 100 million nooks and crannies. But I suspect there will be a smooth flat glass plate on the top.

Spy_Black

" It will still have a filter in front of the sensor just not an anti-aliasing filter... just like the D800E."

Not according to this comment made at the DPReview Hands-On Preview article:

"The D7100's 24.1MP CMOS sensor does not include an optical low-pass filter (OLPF). This is the first time Nikon has taken this approach - the high-end D800E has the effect of its OLPF 'cancelled out' for better resolution, but in theory, doing away with it altogether should give even better detail."

Now, the design nature of the sensor may still incorporate a glass surface above it, this would be logical of course, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Ade

Even without AA there has to be a glass surface of some sort to mount the IR filter.

roombarobot

@Spy_Black Look half way down the page for an explanation of the filters in front of a D800E.
http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/dslr/d800/features01.htm
There are still glass and other filters in front of the sensor.

Spy_Black

Well, I suppose it's only logical, but it wasn't clear to me at first. What's interesting is that apparently the two filters that comprise the low-pass filter are removed from the D7100's sensor. Besides the increase in detail, this should also allow more light to strike the sensor, in effect giving it a better signal-to-noise ratio. It should be interesting to see how this sensor stacks up for dynamic range and noise, despite the smaller size of the photosites.