The Digital Photography Show #57: How to Clean Your DSLR’s Sensor
The Digital Photography Show #57: How to Clean Your DSLR’s Sensor (25Mb, 71 mins)
June 28, 2007: Welcome to the fifty-seventh episode of The Digital Photography Show!
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Today we talk with Chris Butcher of Penn Camera about how to clean you camera’s sensor.
DLSRs are pretty delicate; their sensors even more so. Not only are they subject to bumps and drops, but their innards are sensitive to even a speck of dirt.
Your camera’s sensor is a particularly vulnerable target for dust, which is drawn to it with a Gremlinesque attraction. Dirt on your sensor will show up as small dots or smears in your picture. A whole industry has formed around the need to keep your sensor pristine.
Chris walks us through the different options for cleaning your sensor. They include:
- Giotto Blowers
- Visible Dust Brushes included the Arctic Butterfly (which I think sounds straight out of the Karma Sutra)
- SensorSwabs and Eclipse Fluid
- Delkin SensorScope
If you enjoyed Chris on the show and want to purchase any of the products he’s talked about, would you show your appreciation by buying them from Penn Camera? They have a great mail order service, and I’m sure they’d be glad to serve you. Let them know you heard about them The Digital Photography Show!
Also on the show, we cover updates to Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom.
We congratulate our listener Bob Garras who won first place in Popular Photography’s “Your Best Shot” contest. Great picture, Bob, and congratulations!
We also welcome aboard Laurel, Queen of All Photo Contests. Laurel will be maintaining our Phanfare contest site. Yay, Laurel!
Speaking of our contests, here’s the skinny on our latest: Little Creatures in A Little Color.
We are looking for animals smaller than a cat, which also means No cats and No dogs. Rodent s such as ferrets, gerbils, hamsters, rats, are okay. Bugs, lizards, amphibian are also good. The subj ects can be posed or not. Alive or dead, but you can’t kill it for the contest. And please, no roadkill.
The Technique is: Duotone. This technique is performed with your image processing program. You make th e image have only to colors, any colors you want, however black and white (together) are not acceptable.
1. Email jpg images to dpscontest@gmail.com.
2. The image must be in jpg format, and no more than 800 pixels on its widest side.
3. You may only enter three photographs.
If more than three photographs are entered, the first three received shall be entered.4. Please include the original exif info within the image
5. Please rename the image file with the photographers first and last name (so we know its yours).
6. If you are inclined to title your image (titles are optional),
please append the title after the photographers name of the image file name.
Example file name: MichaelStein_ElbowStuckInEar.jpg7. Only one image per entrant can be eligible as a finalist.
8. Please provide us permission to post the image on our Phanfare site.
9. Photos will be accepted through Saturday, 14 July, 2007.
Bastille Day10. Have fun.
We’d love to hear what you thought of the show either here on the blog or at TheDigitalPhotographyShow@gmail.com.
And if you want to check out Scott’s new blog and see what other nonsense I’m up to, check it out here. And leave me a message letting me know you came by!
Thanks to our advertiser DXO (www.dxo.com) for the 20% discount they are only offering to listeners of this show. Try the program for free, and when you’re ready to buy, use the code DPSSHOW.
And don’t forget the fifty buck discount on Alien Skin’s Snap Art (http://www.alienskin.com/snapart/index.html) and the 50% discount on Exposure (http://www.alienskin.com/exposure/index.html) . Just call and tell them you heard about it on The Digital Photography Show.
Thanks to everyone for listening and joining us here on the blog.
Scott
June 29th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Hi Scott,
There seems to be a glitch on iTunes with episode 57. When I downloaded it was actually episode 56.
Still loving all your shows.
Cheers from New Zealand.
Mike Hollman
June 29th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Haven’t heard the episode yet but a word of warning on sensor cleaning! Had a few issues with dirt on my sensor after stupidly changing lens in what I considered to be a not too dusty environment. Got myself an antistatic brush and tried to clean it. I have attached a link to a composite picture of my attempts! Faced with the prospect of a 300 mile round trip to the nearest Canon service centre, I ended up putting the camera down for a couple of days until my sensor swabs arrived and then cleaned it with the eclipse fluid. Due to the nature of the smear, it took a few goes and I was totally crapping myself the first time but would have no qualms doing it again.
http://www.julianfoley.co.uk/sensornightmare.jpg
Have fun,
Julian
June 29th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Hi folks this is Cameron from TPN. The link to #57 is now fixed. Sorry for the bother.
If you have already downloaded the wrong episode in iTunes, there are two ways for you to fix it.
1. Go to the blog, download the show manually, then open it in itunes.
2. Delete your Digi Photo subscription in itunes and then re-subscribe by clicking on the itunes button on the blog. (itpc://digiphoto.thepodcastnetwork.com/feed/)
Again, many apologies for the hassle! Technical glitch.
July 1st, 2007 at 9:10 am
Hello Scott and Michael:
I listened with interest to the show on cleaning a sensor, even though
I do not own a DSLR.
What I would like to comment on is the use of Eclipse fluid. Chris Butcher did mention that methanol (MEOH) is component in this fluid.
As someone who worked at a petrochemical plant for 22 years where methanol was produced. Advise your listeners that if they use this product to follow the safety instructions on the container, and NOT to get the product on or in them. Say by putting a paint brush in your mouth and sucking the bristles to bring them to a point.
Methanol is poisonous and can seriously damage your eyesight.
See link to Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS)
http://www.sciencelab.com/xMSDS-Alcohol_denatured_with_IPA_and_MeOH-9922820
Keep up the great shows
Allan
July 2nd, 2007 at 1:16 am
How about this new product called Sensor-Film from http://www.sensor-film.com. Its water based and so no chemicals get on your sensor and it lifts off all of the dust on the sensor. I have heard some great reviews!
July 2nd, 2007 at 1:17 am
Terry White of the Creative Suite Podcast has a FREE detailed video podcast of all the updates to Lightroom 1.1. I had no idea all the new updates. I especially like how you can toggle between diffrent databases (catalogues) and the new sharpening tool. I have included a link to his podcast.
http://creativesuitepodcast.com/index.php?post_id=229849
Thanks for the great show this week…I still can’t get myself to clean my sensor.
Laurel
Gainesville, Florida
July 2nd, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Another informative and interesting show, Guys! It really helps to make an informed choice about sensor cleaning.
Julian that is a cool result you illustrated!
As for the sensor-film — a substance akin to thin honey and can take up to 3 hours to dry to pick off dust — not for me!
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:49 am
Yes, well I wouldnt concider sensor film to be something to use very often but it does do a good job of actually lifting dust off, and not just brushing it to the side which some of the brushes do, even when they claim to be static.
Maybe using it for stubborn pieces every so often and then using a rocket blower or brush on a more regular basis would be a good idea,
July 3rd, 2007 at 2:25 am
Sensor cleaning will remain one of the most controversial, non consensus like, and mystical topics of our hobby. Everyone thinks they have the right answer. Even companies like Nikon feed into this with their “politically correct”, conservative approach. yet, the cleaning video from Nikon that leaked onto You Tube shows a tech using a wet approach, with swabs not unlike Sensor Swabs, and a liquid not unlike Eclipse. Yet they say not to do this.
Arthur
July 6th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Great show guys, very informative. I can see that I will be investing in some new cleaning tools in the next few weeks.
I discovered your show only last week and have been listening to your previous shows during my hour long commute to work and back every day. I am up to show 18 now, and love it.
forgive me if you already covered this topic between shows 19 and 56, in which case I will discover it in the next week or so, but I was wondering if you could do a review of the new Pentak K10D.
I am a recent convert to digital and want to upgrade my old Pentax Z-20 slr to a DSLR. On paper it looks like an amazing camera, with built in vibration control, a sensor cleaner and what sounds very appealing to me backwards compatibility with just about every Pentax lens ever made (with the added bonus of them now becoming VR lenses)
I would love to hear what a dedicated Cannon and Nikon man thinks about it?
Keep up the good work and keep spreading the love…
July 7th, 2007 at 7:38 am
Thanks for sharing your story, Julian, and thank for the warning, Allan.
Arthur: You are right on. After we posted this show, we got a very strong reaction from people who had some different opinions on the topic. But I think the methods Chris from Penn Camera laid out were conservative and sensible for most people. And they should be enough to get your sensor clean, too.
Ryan, neither of us knows much about Pentax, but we’ll try to find someone who does. Thanks for the idea.
July 7th, 2007 at 11:32 am
First visit here - and just commercial crap on this site.
“The Digital Photography Show #57: How to Clean Your DSLR’s Sensor (25Mb, 71 mins)”
No show - just commercial.
Got better things to do.
July 9th, 2007 at 7:57 am
Hey guys! Thanks for another great show! I just wanted to post a small correction to your story about sensor cleaning. Apparently, Photographic Solutions, the makers of the Eclipse cleaning solution, are no longer recommending the E2 formula for the Canon 5D. This is confirmed on their website here:
http://www.photosol.com/cameras_bymfg.html
There was also an interesting related thread on dpreview here:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1032&message=23903765
As you said, sensor cleaning is, and will continue to be, a controversial subject. Maybe one of these days the camera makers will come up with a definitive solution…
Thanks again,
Norman
July 9th, 2007 at 10:41 am
John;
You and I must have listened to different podcasts. There was a few minutes of entirely appropriate thanks to sponsors at the start of the show followed by a long discussion about products used to clean DSLR sensors. In the context of such a discussion you have to talk about suppliers of those products. This hardly qualifies as “just commercial crap”.
July 11th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Thanks, Scott-
I brought my brand new Nikon D40 down to the Florida panhandle in early June. While on beautiful Seagrove Beach, I, as a novice, made the mistake of changing lenses on the beach. The result was an instant speck of dust on the sensor. My dealer, having recognized that this was a recent purchase, replaced the entire body for me. You learn from your mistakes.
Since, I have been very conservative in my lens swapping, making sure I do it indoors only, in a clean environment, with the body bayonette opening down. I usually open it up, and blast a few puffs in with my blower every few weeks. I only have 2 lenses, an 18-55, and a 55-200. Since buying the D40 Mother’s Day weekend, I have taken over 11,000 pictures. But I do own a bottle of Eclipse, and Sensor Swabs. I do have to add, this podcast was the best explaination on sensor cleaning, and debunking of popular Internet mythologies I have yet to hear.
But, like everything, where there is cash to be made, and “FUD” to be found…..a whole cottage industry springs up.