The Nikon Z7 image sensor cleaning is faulty or inefficient

I have now had my Z7 since about three months and so far I have not seen any dust problems until a few days ago. To be honest, I think that the Nikon Z7 has a faulty image sensor cleaning function because it does not seem to do anything, even though I have it set to automatically clean the sensor at shutdown, meaning that every time I switch the camera off, it should shake the image sensor so that the dust falls off.

In the D800 there was also a possibility to set up so that this automatic cleaning process also was done at power on, and this could be observed by the flashing LED at the back of the camera, and the LED flashed several times after the camera was switched on or off, indicating the cleaning process. This was very efficient, and during the 7 years I used the D800, with frequent lens changes, I haven't had any dust problems, and only cleaned the sensor once, even then only dry cleaned. Now, I know the D800 has a mechanical shutter, which is closed during lens change, so the sensor is protected a bit, but I have also been a frequent live view user and in any case, during so many years, I would have expected to have serious dust issues if the sensor cleaning was not working.

I have also used the Nikon 1 V1 during the last 6 years, and even on that camera I change lenses often, and even though that is also a mirrorless camera, so the sensor is exposed to open air during lens change, the same way it is when changing lens on the Z7, I have not yet needed to clean that sensor.

Sadly, this is not the case with the Z7. Already after this short time of use, and in spite of quite rare lens changes, my camera was severely dust infected and in an immediate need of cleaning, even though I have it configured so that the automatic cleaning should take place every time I switch the camera off, and I do switch it off every time I don't consider needing it for a some time, which can be several times a day. The LED to the right of the "i" button is NEVER flashing, but that can be by design the case, or because of a firmware bug, I don't know. Never the less, the cleaning process odes not take place as it supposed to be, or it is so inefficient that it practically does nothing.

This is a test image to show the situation when I decided that I must do something about the dust. It is clear that there are far too many dust specs to be called "acceptable". Yes, to see this large number, I had to take the image at f/22 and process it so that most of the specs become visible, meaning that in a real situation these would not be visible, because I almost never stop down below f/8, but it is still disturbing because in macro images these will no doubt become visible and also in many other situations where the scenario is optimal for visible dust.

Surprised by the high number of dust specs, I decided to run the "Clean now" option in the camera. After running that once, I took a new picture but the results were the same, so I run it about 8-10 times in a row. The results were a bit better, but still totally unacceptable and still very much infected. After this test it is obvious that the built in sensor cleaning function is faulty or so incredibly inefficient that using it just gives us a false sense of security about it.

Of course, this is not acceptable and Nikon should do something about it. Especially considering that they didn't even sold the cameras with one single free och charge cleaning service, not even during the warranty, unlike both the D300s and the D800. Maybe they knew that the Z cameras will need a more frequent cleaning than the DSLRs, maybe they expected the image cleaning function to work just as good, which would have made it an unnecessary service. I don't know, but considering Nikon warns the users to clean the image sensor manually, this is not good at all.

The good thing about my dust problem is that for now, it has been easily solved using a rocket blower. A few puffs of air seems to have done more than what running the cleaning function manually 8-10 times could do. So for now, my dust infected sensor is clean again, but hopefully Nikon will do something about the cleaning function, because that seems definitely not working. It is also much faster, because for some reason, each manually activated cleaning takes 20 seconds. Don't ask me why, I have no idea.

Please note that the images are clickable, clicking on them will open a larger size image for you to check the details. Note also that the images have gone through severe post processing to make the dust specs visible, there is nothing wrong with my camera, other than the dust cleaning function.

This problem is also demonstrated in my video:

Just to clear some misunderstanding...

In case there is a doubt, I love this camera. It was worth every penny and would buy it again even if I knew about the inefficiency of the dust cleaner function, but in my opinion it is good to know that it does not do what what I expected it to do. This way I know I need to clean it regularly.

Just some words of warning

DON'T USE CANNED AIR if you decide to clean your camera. It may cause more damage than do any good. Also, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk.