Technocrat Tuesday: Digitial SLR Cleaning

*MAJOR WARNING*

The following article is presented as one persons viewpoint, and does not represent what you should do to your camera. No liability is taken if you decide to follow these instructions. If in doubt, send your camera to a professional to clean the sensor

Sensor Cleaning is something that Digital SLR users need to address as spots can appear in images, like small dark patches in the image. This is a sign of dust or other contaminants have got through.

If you want to avoid cleaning the camera, work at smaller apertures. However this can only hold off the inevitable - you're going to have to clean it.

Firstly, its nigh on impossible to avoid dust. Therefore as precautions.. do the following:

* switch off your camera before changing lens
* change your lenses with the mount of the camera pointing to the ground

I'll be honest. I don't obey those precautions... I'm normally working too fast, and I need to get the image rather than worry about the sensor.

Before you go on, if you're not confident about this, PLEASE don't read any further. Send it to a professional to service your camera.

There are many different cleaning systems in the marketplace. Mine is a very simple one... that is to blow the dust out of the way. Do not use a blower with a brush, but a a blower with a larger bulb to push air through is far more preferred. Canned air is a very big no-no... that's normally got a lot of extra contaminants inside that can damage the electronics of the camera.

So:

* Charge the camera battery to full - you'll need it
* Go through your camera setttings till you find a "clean sensor" option
* Follow the instructions to let the camera go into clean sensor mode
* Remove the lens
* Hold the camera face down, with the mount pointing to the floor
* Using your blower (A Gitzo rocket or something of that kind), point the nosel near the mirror box, but not placing it in it, blow repeatedly working left to right, and up and down

This should remove a lot of the larger partials and should suffice for many people.

Normally at this point, if the dust was bad, the camera would be sent off or taken to a cleaner - there are only so many things I'd risk!

To remove stuck partials, Wet cleans and brushed cleans are better solutions as they can pick up the finer bits partials. If you use a brush, an artists paint brush is not
thin enough - you need a special brush - Arctic Butterflys are good soultions.

Some prefer a Wet clean - using a pre-treated pad, or using their own materials. There's even a little vacuum that you can get (which I'm looking into at the moment).

There are lots of solutions out there (hovers, spinners, brushes) ... but if you're NOT confident (like me), PLEASE DON'T DO IT YOURSELF. YOU DO RUN THE RISK OF PERMANENTLY DAMAGING YOUR CAMERA!!!!


If you camera is in warranty, your manufacture may clean it free (check with the warranty departments)

Cameras that have Anti Dust solutions are subject to the same rigours as the ones that don't - just be careful when cleaning please people!

I've loaded a few examples of sensor dust tools i use... and some examples of dust on sensors (when i get back in).

Comments and hints from other users welcome

You can clean up images a lot if you use the clone tool, but this adds a high amount of creative time