Some guy recently tested the current crop of SLR cameras with ‘dust removal’ systems to see how effective they actually are.

Sensor cleaning is becoming a standard feature on modern digital SLR cameras. While the manufacturers may use different techniques to get rid of the dust from the image sensor, they all promise clean, dust free images. Do they all work equally well? Can we throw our air blower away? We have tested the four different types of sensor cleaning technologies to see which one will most likely to fulfill the expectations.

I was quite surprised with the results, and how badly they all performed. It turns out they are all pretty much useless when it comes to cleaning/dust removal. Only the Olympus fared reasonably.

Here is our ranking according to effectiveness:

1. Olympus: good
2. Canon: poor (we are disappointed)
3. Pentax and Sony: useless (we are very disappointed)

If you are looking for a camera, have the dust removal as an expectation only at the end of your list. If sensor cleaning / dust removal is a must, the choices are limited to Olympus and Panasonic cameras.

Read the full test here:

Review: Dust removal systems / sensor cleaning