Olympus XZ-1 stain on photos

Question

Each photo taken in landscape orientation with my Olympus XZ-1 shows a dark stain on the top right, like in this example.

Does anybody else has this problem? Could it be a dump patch? How can I diagnose what's going wrong? Should I send the camera to the assistance as long as it is under guarantee? If the guarantee had expired, what would be my best options?

Answer 1

I've had almost identical spot/problem with my Finepix F30 after a trip to some local waterfalls. Sent it for checkup - they said it's water damage to the sensor and cannot be easily cleaned. The price they quoted for repair was more than the current value of the F30, so I ended up buying Canon S90.

Answer 2

Remember, this is a small sensor camera, so dust is magnified. With the note that it is invisible at wide aperture and visible stopped down, the diagnosis is near-certain: there's a speck of dust on the low-pass filter in front of the sensor. (There's a small chance that it's a stain from water as Boby says, as well, but the sample looks more like dust to me.)

With a compact camera, sending it in for cleaning is usually the only option. This'll probably cost $100 — and they'll probably do it under warranty for you at least once. If you don't want to pay that, you can:

• resign yourself to only shooting with wide apertures in situations where the dust isn't visible
• clone it out in post-processing every time
• use this as an excuse to buy an interchangeable lens camera with a dust-removal system (and where you can clean the sensor yourself if need be)