Sensor Cleaning?

fgianni

fgianni

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I am just curious how do you guys clean the sensor, any advice on materials, procedure etc?
 
I haven't cleaned my R-D1 sensor yet but my friend Michael Reichmann reviewed a very good brush on LL sometime earlier this year (I forget the name) which seems to be the way to go. I keep meaning to get one because I have three, soon four, sensors to keep clean. My current method for cleaning the DSLRs isn't worth recommending.

Cheers,

Sean
 
Sean Reid said:
I haven't cleaned my R-D1 sensor yet but my friend Michael Reichmann reviewed a very good brush on LL sometime earlier this year (I forget the name) which seems to be the way to go.

Sean
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These are the Visible Dust brushes: http://www.visibledust.com/index.html and although expensive come highly recommended by a number of people. They have full cleaning kits available as well.

Despite 9 months of use and many lens changes my R-D1 sensor does not seem to have picked up much dust and I have not needed to clean it yet. IMHO its best left alone unless an obvious problem. I think that as there is no "flipping" mirror or zoom lenses continually pushing the dust around it is less of a problem. Although I do remember someone posting a picture here of an R-D1 sensor that looked as if it had been out in a sand storm.
 
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fgianni said:
What do you use, spit on an hanky?
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No, that would be primitive. I use a garden hose....

Sean


Note to all: That was a joke, don't try at home.
 
Sean Reid said:
No, that would be primitive. I use a garden hose....
Sean

Note to all: That was a joke, don't try at home.
Click to expand...
Sean,
I would have given it a go on my digital SLR (not the be beloved R-D1) but we have a Hosepipe Ban at the moment due to the drought. :D
Jim
 
I use a very simple method. Get one of those bulb hand blowers from the camera shop. Mine looks like a 50's space ship. I remove the lens, turn the camera on to sensor clean, hold it upside down - lens mount facing the floor, and use the blower. The sensor on my camera is almost always virtually clean except for dust. I have yet to use any sort of sensor cleaner such as Visual Dust. Dust becomes more of a problem when I'm in the field and change lenses frequently. I always power down the camera when changing lenses to reduce any static charge from the sensor that might attract dust.

Cheers.
 
As I've noted before, I'm relatively new to the digital end of photography so excuse me if this is a dumb question.

Is there a reason that a small vaccuum couldn't be used to clean sensors? If the sensor is holding a charge then ground it to get rid of the charge. That should make it easy to pick up dust with just suction - without even touching the sensor.

The only problem that I could see with this would be the possibility that grounding the sensor might fry it like a computer chip.

So, is it possible???
 
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