Nikon Lens Troubles

I've got two lenses giving me trouble with my D70, hope y'all can help me out.

First, the 18-70mm lens that came with the camera kit has a bunch of dust in it. There doesn't seem to be any dust on the camera sensor itself since I don't see dust spots in photos taken with other lenses. I can see the dust on the second from forward most piece of glass (second element?). Is there anything I can do for this at home or do I have to send it in to have this cleaned? How much is this service? I know I can use "Image Dust Off" to clean up RAW files, but sometimes I like to shoot JPEG too.

http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~fch3/dust!.jpg

Second, I have a 70-300mm f/4-5.6G AF Zoom-Nikkor which now produces blurry shots (though it worked fine with my old N65). I can't figure out if I damaged the lens, if I'm having some sort of "chromatic abberation" problem or if there's some other reason this lens is not working well with my D70. I had an excellent opportunity to photograph a western diamondback recently and the shots were ruined due to this blur! What can I do about this?

http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~fch3/head.jpg

thanks,

You won't be able to actually see the dust on a sensor by looking at it - maybe really big pieces, but something like this you wouldn't. If you're not seeing it with other lenses, then it's probably not the sensor. This does look like sensor dust, and I've never had dust inside a lens cause a problem. Take another lens (wide angle if you've got it), stop down to f22 and shoot the open sky - like your sample shot but just the sky. If you have any dust on the sensor it will show up because of the huge amount of depth of field.

If it's clean, see about having the lens cleaned. Nikon can do it but it will take some time (few weeks). They'll also check everything over and make sure it's operating properly. But I'm a little skeptical that this is the problem.

The other lens - do you have another body to try it on now? Try cleaning the contacts on the lens mount, maybe there's some dirt there.

For the dust issue..

How old is your D70 kit? If it's less than 30 days and you got it from Ritz camera or something, return or exchange it. If that is not an option but it is still within the warrantee, I'd contact Nikon service about a free cleaning -- especially if you've had the dust from the get-go.

Good luck,
Tim

I tested things out with my macro lens as suggested and sure enough, there's dust there too. Guess I just don't notice it on that lens because I usually use it with the aperture fairly wide open. The kit is over a year old, for now I guess I'll just deal with it using Image Dust-Off, but it will stink not being able to really stop down a lens when using jpegs.

I have sent my other lens off with a friend who has a N80 and I asked him to take a few shots with it. I used the timer on the attached snake shot, I was about 10 feet from the subject, and the shutter speed was at 1/50 and I got some nasty blur. Some have suggested that at 1/50, with a 300 mm focal length that just mirror slap could cause such blurriness. If so, what can I do about that?!?