Sensor cleaning

Every once in a while the digital photographer, when using a Dslr, will be confronted with the mysterious spots in his pictures. These are generally the result of small dust particles on the sensor, or actually, on the filter in front of the sensor.

Many different ways are being offered for removing this, however 1 thing is very clear, this removing should be done extremely carefully as the sensor can get damaged very easily.

Several cleaning kits are on the market varying in price form € 50 - 90, however also in the use of these kits there are risks of causing damage.

The safest way is having your ccd cleaned by the camera manufacturer or the service center in your country, however they often will charge a fee for this. There is a cheap and safe way to do this however, and this way will settle the problem quite often.

• 1/ Take care your camera battery is fully charged, or put the camera on a net-supply
• 2/ Take the lens of the camera
• 3/ Switch the camera on and open the shutter, you can find how to do this in your manual
• 4/ Turn the lens mount downwards and take a blowbrush from which you removed the brush
• 5/ Blow into the camera, towards the sensor without touching the inside of the camera

After a few blows cose the shutter and replace the lens. Often you will find that the dust has been removed.

However do not use any canned/compressed air !! in this air there will very often be very small moist drups which will only make your problem worse !!

I've done this allready for some 3 years now and have allways been able to solve the dust problem this way.

Personally i only do this when i have dust which is very clearly visible. As long as the specs are very small i will usually remove them when editing with the help of the healing brush or clone stamp in Photoshop.