CameraCrazy

You’re up at 5 am, out the door to get to your predetermined spot, take 20 minutes to setup the tripod and really begin to wake up. The sun begins to rise and you start shooting like crazy before the crucial 15-30 minutes of great light is over. After you’re done you go home, download your pictures and notice a couple of black spots in your shot. Yep, despite all the efforts you have taken, some how the dreaded dust has infiltrated your camera and caused you some editing time. Worst of all you know the time has come to that you need to lock up the mirror and clean the sensor. Just the thought of touching the what’s typically the most expensive part of a camera can bring beads of sweat to your forehead.

Well a bit of an exaggeration for those who have owned their DSLR for a year or two, however the first time I had to clean my sensor, similar emotions occurred.

After all you’re about to start playing around inside the camera and worst of all on the most expensive part of the camera. Now since every camera is different I can’t really tell you the best way to clean a sensor, but what I can do is give you some general information that is out there to help you out and hopefully relieve the stress involved in cleaning a sensor.

The first way to avoid the stress of cleaning your sensor is using preventative maintenance. In simple terms, do your best to minimize the chances that dust can get in. Two great tips for doing that are don’t change your lens in a dusty environment and let gravity help you out. Although the first tip likely seems obvious keep in mind a few things, it can be difficult to determine what is a dusty environment, after-all dust is extremely small. One way to figure out a dusty area that nobody seems to mention is to look for a ray of light. Kind of like the sun shining through a crack in a relatively dark room, by being able to see the air where the light can get in usually does a great job of illuminating dust in the air. Now granted that won’t be the case in all situations, the other thing I keep an eye on is the breeze. I’m not a big fan of having to change lenses in wind. From times that I have done it, I definitely notice dust build up faster then if the air was still. So if its possible find a calm area, I found that forests and the bottom of large hills are great places to get away from the wind. Or if a shelter or your car is around, try that.

The gravity method is the other technique I use. Now dust is light and easily moved but typically if you’re in a calm environment dust will move towards the ground. Turn your camera so the lens is facing the ground. Then get your lens that you want to put on ready by placing on a table or other suitable location and loosen the cap. Now detach your lens from the camera and put it on the table, take the cap off the new lens place it on the old lens and then move the new lens to the camera and attach. Pretty simple, but remember this. MOVE SLOWLY. Lots of people use this method, but feel such a compulsion to avoid dust that they take the lens off as fast as possible and then rocket the new lens to the camera and attach. The problems I’ve found with doing this is that in moving fast you create air right around the camera opening and often push dust into the camera and then after a few shots, the dust is on your sensor. If you move slowly, you can often avoid this.

Well no matter how hard you try you just need to accept the fact that dust is a part of the photography game and you will at some point see a black dot show up on your picture. When I see this, the first thing I do is leave the lens on and look at the filters and front of the lens. In other words make sure the dust really is on the sensor and not the filter or lens itself. I carry around lens cleaning paper in my bag so I can pull out a sheet and give the filters and lens a quick cleaning. The upside to doing this is even when the dust indeed is on the sensor, It keeps me on top of general cleaning of the glass to ensure clean sharp pictures. Well after cleaning the glass, you finally confirmed the dust is on the sensor, what now.

Before you even think about grabbing a sensor swap and wiping it across the CCD, try using a blower first. Most dust that gets on your sensor is laying lightly on the surface, a blower can usually remove all the dust without having to touch it. Now when I say blower I am NOT talking about compressed air. It may be very effective at removing dust from between your keyboard, but it can be dangerous to your sensor. A compressed air canister if tilted slightly can spray fluids (I’m assuming the propellant or liquid air) and the last thing you want to do is soak the inside of your camera with that stuff. The blower I’m talking about is the hand driven one for about $10-20. You can find them at pretty much any store that sells cameras and the one I recommend would be one with a separate valve with a filter. So the air replaced to the blower goes through a filter removing dust. Blowers with single openings can often suck in dust from the air and then blow it right onto your sensor. When using the blower, use the gravity method so any dust thats blown off the sensor can fall down and out of the camera housing. I also recommend a few seconds of wait time between blowing air onto the sensor to allow the removed dust to get out of the way and not be blown back in.

Honestly, the above techniques should often solve the problem around 80-90% of the time. Up until the beginning of April which ironically sparked the idea to write this post, I’ve managed to not touch my sensor since August of 2007.

If you do have to clean the sensor there are a couple of techniques you could use. The most common one is to use a sensor swab and some cleaning solution. If you do need to swab the sensor, don’t panic, take your time and some comfort that in most DSLR’s you’re actually swabbing a glass covering and not the actual CCD. Here is a link to a good article on how to typically clean a sensor from Fuji. Although the instructions are for a specific camera it does give a good idea of how to swab.

Another method that recently hit the mainstream for cleaning CCD is using Discofilm. Although I don’t really recommend the idea I thought I would mention it. Discofilm was originally designed to clean LP’s (records, the music things before 8-track tapes)! It’s water based and you basically paint it on the sensor, let it dry and pull off using a paper tab you also painted on. Yeah I know, sounds a little extreme. I don’t want to focus too much on this technique because I really can’t condone the use of it yet, since I haven’t been able to try it out. If you are interested in learning more about it, here is a link to the page of the person who discovered the new use of this old product. I could see Discofilm being a good sensor cleaner if you’re really obsessed about getting every microscopic particle of dust or if you ever run into a situation where your camera accumulates a large amount of dust. In my opinion the 1 hour drying time required doesn’t seem feasible and the idea and associated stress involved with painting your sensor with a chemical (even water based) seems a little risky.

I guess the last piece of advice I have is try not to get too obsessed with dust. It’s really easy once you looked at the sensor and spent a few minutes to become obsessed with having to remove every spec of dust leading to a lot of time and sensor swabs wasted. If you can’t see the dust on the LCD or it’s not in a location that you care about like the edges of the photo that are usually cropped, then don’t worry about it go out and take pictures, rather then becoming frustrated.

One thing that I didn’t like when I had to clean my sensor was the cost of the products. I was shocked that a three pack of sensor swabs costs $15. These swabs consist of a glorified plastic popsicle stick, a piece of cloth about an inch square thats attached with a small rubber band. Seriously, the production costs couldn’t be more then a dime each. If you want a cheaper alternative, pick up one swab and a package of PEC Pads, these are sheets made by the same company, however come in much larger sheets and packages of 100 for around $10. When you need to clean the CCD, just fold one of these sheets rubber band it to the plastic stick and viola you have a sensor swab for about 50 cents. In talking to a couple of camera shops this is the technique they use when cleaning CCD’s brought in by customers.

I guess the last thing to mention is more of a caveat, although I don’t consider sensor cleaning that difficult of a task, everyone has different abilities. With that in mind I must qualify my post by saying that the above tips in the article are techniques I use and find useful, they may not be for everyone so if you do decide to employ these techniques, you do so at your own risk.

If sensor cleaning really is a stressful situation for you I would suggest taking your camera into a camera store and get someone to clean it. Better yet, ask to be there and have them show you what they do to get a better idea of how it’s done. After seeing the techniques it will likely put you more at ease and not be too scary the next time it needs to be done.