It’s a cool, rainy day here in Annapolis, America’s Sailing Capital. (Most people will accept Annapolis as the Sailing Capital, unless you live in Newport or San Diego.) And a cool rainy day might seem an odd time to talk about dust on your images, but it can happen any time.

I got an email from a friend yesterday that said he had a spot on his images he couldn’t get rid of and he asked my advice.

First, I told him, put away that can of compressed air. Save that for dust on your keyboard or to blow dandelion seeds out of your camera bag, but it has no business being used on cameras. Compressed air has a propellant in it that can leave a residue on lenses and really screw up your images sensor.

Looking for the dirt, I recommended he check the lens first, both outside and on the inside where the glass meets the camera. He had already done this but it was a good chance to talk about what to clean the glass with.

I have a small, squeezable thingy with a brush on the end. Nothing fancy, but you can get some sophisticated squeezable things that will do the same thing. This is my first assault on dirt since it gently brushes away solids that have landed there. I’d rather brush them off than smear them onto the lens.

Next is a lens cloth. This is the key for smudges and fingerprints. If a real lens cloth isn’t handy you can use clean cotton. Never use a paper product like a paper towel, nose tissue or even toilet paper. The tiny wood fibers will scratch your glass.

This will take care of most dirt issues on a camera, but if not, the dirt may be (queue dramatic music) on your sensor!

This isn’t the end of the world. Many cameras now have vibrating sensors that literally shake the dust off. My Nikon D-700s do this automatically. Some cameras might require a menu option be chosen to do this cleaning shake.

If your camera can’t shake its dirt off, or if it can’t shake it all off, then you need to clean the sensor. You’ll need to get one of the products specifically designed to clean sensors. Don’t even think of reaching for a Q-tip and whatever cleaner you had in mind. Put it down!

I was shooting in the northern Sahara Desert (yes, lots of sand) when I got my first sensor dirt. A colleague had a sensor cleaner called a Sensor Swab by Photographic Solutions Inc. (photosol.com) It saved my butt.

Upon returning to the States I bought one of their kits, which consisted of several disposable swabs and a bottle of cleaning fluid. However, my very next trip through airport security found that bottle confiscated. A tad too big I guess. This was painful as the kit wasn’t cheap.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one to contribute my gear to the TSA garbage can. The folks at Photographic Solutions have come out with individual, pre-moistened swabs. I bought a handful. This is a better solution IMHO because now I divide them up among my various camera bags.

There are other makers of sensor cleaners out there but I don’t have experience with them. I won’t go into detailed instructions on the actual technique of cleaning the chip itself; I’ll leave that up to the directions on the package. But you’ll probably need to go into the camera menu and lock up the mirror to get access to the sensor.

That should do it. If it doesn’t, I think you’re in for a repair job. But the above steps should get 99% of the stuff off you photos.

All for now. I think I’ll put on my Musto foul weather gear jacket and take some pictures in the rain….

Mark
www.MarkDuehmig.com