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How to Keep Your Digital Camera Lens Dust Free
Dread of the dusty sensor
If you're shooting with a digital SLR and start to notice dark specks appearing in your photos, don't get all short of breath: this is not caused by ectoplasm seeping in from the spirit world. It's just dust. When you change lenses on an SLR, dust can get inside the camera and settle on the sensor, darkening little spots in the pictures you take.
You might have a camera that has a built-in sensor-dusting function, but most cameras still require a careful manual cleaning.
1. Buy a self-cleaning SLR.
Dust specks on the sensor cause dark spots like the ones marring the sky in the photo on the left. You can see the spots close-up on the right.
There are currently two cameras which have a built in feature to clean the sensor, the E1 and Evolt E-300, manufactured by Olympus. Every time you turn the camera on or activate the filter, a Supersonic Wave Filter vibrates the sensor which shakes the dust off. Included are adhesive strips which run along the sides of the sensor to collect the dust. From my experience the system works pretty well. It's unfortunate that other manufacturers don't offer something similar.
2. Clean your camera with care. If you don't have an Olympus SLR (or even if you do but are in a very dusty environment), sooner or later you'll have to clean the sensor. If you're nervous about doing it yourself, you can send it to the manufacturer for a professional cleaning. However, that's not a very practical or affordable way to handle the situation every time a new little spot shows up. Although you should take the utmost care, the best solution is probably to clean the dust out yourself.
Most sensors have a protective glass covering, and unfortunately if you scratch or damage it, there's a good chance the manufacturer's warranty will not cover repairs. Try not to be casual about what you put inside the camera. A note: never blow compressed air into your camera. Compressed air uses propellants that can leave a residue and create a film over your sensor.
You want to use products that are made specifically for sensor cleaning. There are a variety of products available from manufacturers such as Photographic Solutions and Visible Dust. Speck Grabber from Kinetronics' is a great product as it has a little light built in which is helpful for getting at particular bits of debris. If you own a Kodak camera you can use the Kodak sensor-cleaning kit; this is a great product as well as it also provides detailed instructions on how to clean its cameras' sensors.
When you have purchased your product and are ready to clean the sensor you need to put the camera into sensor-cleaning mode so that the sensor is exposed (check the manual about how to do this with your particular model) and remove the lens. Use should use a bulb blower to blow dust off the sensor (you will want to make sure you hold the camera up so that the dust falls out instead of settling inside again). Carefully follow the instructions of the cleaning product you've chosen. This typically involves carefully swabbing the surface of the protective glass over the sensor.
To make sure that you have gotten rid of all the dust you can take a picture of a blank wall or piece of paper. Look at it at full size on a computer monitor and see if you can detect any remaining specks.
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