camera sensor failing?? pls. help!

[mdphoto]

I was shooting several hundred pictures on Sunday, and when I viewed them at home, I saw that a couple dozen of them had a strange looking burst of blue color points of light. In the middle of the series of hundreds of pictures. They were there after a couple hundred without, and then in later pictures, they gone again. At first, I thought it was some kind of weird sunburst light effect or something. But it doesn't look like that when you zoom. It looks like something coming from inside the camera. My guess is the sensor having major issues. Is anyone familiar with this? What is it? Is my sensor dying? If so, why did it recover? I'm shooting with a Nikon D-50. It's about 4 years old. I don't know how many shutter clicks in its lifespan, but it has to be more than 10,000, less than 50,000.

sample photo here with lighting effect circled... zoomed in to show detail.

help???

[equilution]

Yikes. I've never seen that before. Is every picture the same exact way? All the same pixels? Or is there a randome scattering from one picture to the next? If it's the same, then all those pixels are bad. IF it's random, I would suspect something inside the camera causing the scattering light onto the sensor.

Jim

PS...the mods will probably move this thread to another forum.

[Hayward Taylor]

Hi Megan - that doesn't look good ... did you try changing lenses ??? ... zoom vs prime ..
try this first and see what happens

[mdphoto]

Originally Posted by equilution

Yikes. I've never seen that before. Is every picture the same exact way? All the same pixels? Or is there a randome scattering from one picture to the next? If it's the same, then all those pixels are bad. IF it's random, I would suspect something inside the camera causing the scattering light onto the sensor.

Jim

PS...the mods will probably move this thread to another forum.

Thanks Jim - (sorry - new here, didn't know where best to post) I looked again, the series that have these bad pixels are in the same general area, but are definitely dispersed differently from picture to picture. Not the same in each. Could it be something as simple as dust on the sensor? Odd since I didn't change lenses though, so nothing new was introduced after about 200 pictures with no bad pixels. And then oddly - the effect went away and I had several dozen more good shots immediately following this series.

[mdphoto]

Originally Posted by Hayward Taylor

Hi Megan - that doesn't look good ... did you try changing lenses ??? ... zoom vs prime ..
try this first and see what happens

Thanks Hayward. I was shooting my 50mm 1.8 the whole time. Went from pictures that were fine, to the weird pixel thing, back to fine all within the same shoot (a couple hours start to finish).

[Hayward Taylor]

Hi there ... I mean mount a different lens now to see if the problem is still there. ...

[rahsoft]

If I may add ?
Hayward is right to suggest to try a different lens for the purpose of elimination.

different lens = no problem = first lens issue ( clean and retest)

different lens = same problen = sensor issue ( clean and retest ) maybe use a professional if cleaning sensor is an issue.
also test using a plain white paper maybe witha grid on it ( to see if problem moves)

regards

[OsmosisStudios]

That doesnt seem like a lens issue: its somewhere between the sensor and the memory card: sensor, A/D, processing, card.