Sensor Cleaning Contentious!

[Sailor Ted]

My M8's sensor seems to be dirty all the time. Despite the fact I blow the thing every day (wait did I just say that?) Anyway what if any sage wisdom do long time digital photogs have to share on this touchy subject? The M8's manual is vague except to say if you do clean it yourself you are on your own if something goes wrong (no warrantee coverage for sensor cleaning mishaps) and if you send it in for a cleaning you must pay...

Ted

 

[peterc]

Blowing air across the sensor every day is probably the reason it's always dirty.
My experience (from dSLRs) is never use a blower ... all it does is move crud onto the sensor.
Clean it with a sensor swab and Eclipse fluid or one of the sensor brushes and leave it until you see major chunks again.
Also, take care when changing lenses and never fire the shutter without a lens in place.

Peter

 

[jaapv]

I have good experiences with blowing the sensor with the Rocket Blower on my Canons,(never-ever canned air!) but as Peter said, it seems less successful on the M8. The Arctic Butterfly sensorbrush works well. In my case swabbing only if major dirt is not removable by brushing. And I don't mind a few clones in PS.

 

[scho]

Dust Mapping

Dust Mapping

Has anyone tried creating a a dust map for their sensor and then using it in postprocessing to remove blemishes?
http://heliconfocus.com/pages/dustmap.html

 

[kaiyen]

While it was written for Nikon DSLR's, Thom Hogan's guide to cleaning digital sensors is a great resource. I follow his regimen closely.
http://bythom.com/cleaning.htm

allan

 

[Toby]

A good tip is to always turn the camera off if you are changing lenses. This way the sensor has no dust attracting electrical charge when it's open to the elements.

 

[jaapv]

A good tip is to always turn the camera off if you are changing lenses. This way the sensor has no dust attracting electrical charge when it's open to the elements.

And keep the lens opening in the camera facing downwards. And take the rear lens cap of the lens you want to mount off before you remove the lens from the camera, to minimise changing time.

 

[RML]

If all else fails, just blame Leica for producing such a horrendously poorly designed camera. It's a crying shame that the M8 doesn't have any of these fancy shaking-dust-off-sensor devices built in!