Sensor Cleaning: an example.
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Here's something from this morning that I thought would be fun to share.
I'm going to be taking a lot of photos with my GH1 this weekend, so I decided to check and see if its sensor was dirty. I've never actually seen any spots on its photos, but I just wanted to be sure. I stopped it down to f/22, focused it at infinity, and waved it at a plain white wall for twenty seconds. With levels adjusted to show the dust, here's the 'as is' photo:
So I grabbed my rocket blower, gave it a bunch of blasts - including in the bathroom after running the shower to pull dust out of the air - and ran the built-in sensor cleaner a half-dozen times. I tested the results, and then did it again. And again. Again. I finally stopped my efforts when the results looked like this:
Yes, that's actually worse than before I messed with it. My mother always told me: "leave well enough alone", and this is exactly what she meant. There wasn't an actual problem before, but now some of those new spots were visible at f/11, and were still faint at f/8, which is the narrowest that I'll typically shoot. Fortunately, I have some 1x sensor swabs (by Visible Dust) for my D700, and when I trimmed the edges off, it's the perfect size to do a wet cleaning of the 4/3 sensor size. Two delicate swipes, and here's the result:
As I always say, close enough is good enough - I'm going to leave well enough alone.
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Thanks for the great writeup Matthew!
Brings back memories of my review...
http://shuttertalk.com/articles/arcticbutterfly
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I was thinking that I would have to buy an Arctic Butterfly to try to get the sensor clear - but then I figured out to use the 1x swabs vertically instead of horizontally. Despite my reputation, I do like solving problems without buying new things.
I was really surprised that the blower only made things worse on the GH1, because it does a good job in clearing most of the dust bunnies from my D700. The built-in cleaner on Olympus and Panasonic cameras is also quite effective, unlike the one on the Nikon, and it didn't help either. My temporary conclusion is that the 'dust buster' had already gotten rid of everything that a blower bulb would be able to remove, and the rest (and what got added) was probably pollen or similarly 'sticky' stuff. It is Spring here, and I've never been particularly rigorous about where and when I change lenses.
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So tell me what do you gain by having waterproof and dustproof cameras, as when you change the lenses you must get dust in and maybe moisture even if it is miniscule.
I obviously realise that if it is bucketing down the waterproofing is going to be a help, but only if you don't have to make a lens change.
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I use the sensor swabs and cleaning fluid as well - but I don't do it very often. Never felt that blowers worked for sensors - glad to see proof of it. Great write-up.
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I found that using the blower didn't help much, so I decided to look for a video to explain the procedure. I found one that told me how to do it and I cleaned the sensors of all my cameras with Q-tips and alcohol from the drugstore. I found the procedure very easy and I got good results.
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Water/dust-proof cameras are something else altogether - as soon as you open any door, port, or remove a lens, of course it won't hold up. I'd always rather use my E-1 or D700 in the rain than an unsealed body/lens combination, but that's solving a different problem.
I'll have to do a comparison test with my 700 to see if the blower bulb makes a difference, and how much (more?) of a difference a wet cleaning will make. Maybe next week, when I have a bit of time....
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Oh God, I don't even want to know what's on my sensor.
I used to change lenses in dirty smoke-filled nightclubs (before I got the 50mm F1.8) and I also smoke in our dusty home.
Pollen has been off the charts this spring.
I'm very good at precise technical stuff so cleaning a sensor is something I look forward to mastering someday, just not too soon.
Another reason I miss my Sony F717--the lens movements were all-internal so the whole thing was sealed against drawing dust inside.
Never saw the slightest hint that there was a single speck on the sensor after years of hard use.
(I'm going to get it fixed someday, I swear!)
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I do find though that landscape photographers get the raw end of the deal, especially when shooting clear blue skies and with really small apertures. The dirt tends to show up more readily.
If you're shooting wide open and with lots of detail in the photos, it does tend to go unnoticed.
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Dead right Jules.
I've found that it is a really bad idea to do what is recommended as a pre-clean, by shooting a frame against the sky, then boosting the contrast on your monny: reveals all manner of things you wish you had no awareness of whatsoever. Frightened myself silly this way before my Italy trip last year, spent 30 quid on cleaners and had to wrench myself away from making it worse.
On the subject of weather-sealing: of course, the whole process only works if you have sealed lenses too. In fact, I've found that in real, practical life, having a weathersealed system can make the dust problem worse: there can be a "sucking effect" upon zooming, worsening the better sealing there is! One is effectively turning one's kit into a set of bellows which forces air/dust in at higher velocity through just one tiny hole somewhere rather than through various orifices in the body...resulting in a concentrated dust-blast in exquisitely turbo-driven force hitting your sensor just where you don't want it.
In fact, though I'm glad my kit is weathersealed against water, etc; I'm not so enamoured of its resulting "dust-sealing".
I'm now keeping sensor cleans to an absolute minimum, preferring to use the patch tool to "spot" in the resulting file.
At least we don't have to hand-spot negatives in a darkroom any more though.
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I had a little spot on the mirror or sensor. I appeared as two faint concentric circles, very small. It seems to have vanished by itself.
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get a can of compressed air. that's what I use for sensor cleaning.
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Ooo...I'm too kit-cowardly to trust a freezing turbo blast on me sensitive bits...:/
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I had a minimal amount of sensor dust on my rebel, but I had dust spots and tiny hairs in/on? the graticule when viewing through the eye viewfinder. ( The only way to view with a 350D)
So I returned it to one of Canon's official repairers. It came back rather worse than when it went. After a phone call they said return it and they would refund postage and packing. Fine. It came back super clean except the screen was cracked. (Bad packing ???) It was returned, again with the postage refunded, but my faith in this particular repairer is now in the ether. £160 I think was the charge.
So next time I will clean it with a kit I bought (Fluid, swabs, buds, and tissues) and if it goes to pot, I will buy a new camera and call it updating. :|
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The trouble with compressed air is that it can actually blow other dust that exists inside the camera body onto the sensor making the problem worse. Use fluid and sterile swabs - it takes a little patience but it really works unlike every other solution that I have tried. Don't use tissues for sensors - they can scratch.
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The kits have different size pads for different camera sensors. Type 2 was for a 350D and some others.
http://www.cameraclean.co.uk/index.php
I bought a kit like this but with a bottle of screen and lens cleaner and some other pads for general cleaning. Full instructions came with it, but up to now, I have not used it for sensor cleaning. All the packs are sealed so will still be fresh. The sensor swabs are individually sealed.
I also bought at the same time a 118ml of photographic emulsion cleaner (Pec 12) for when I was (and still am) doing scanning of old slides. That works very well although you have to get right into the corners. or you get hairy edges when scanning.
I think all together about £40.00, maybe less.
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(This post was last modified: May 31, 2010, 02:47 by canonkid.)
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