I embarked on a potentially fraught task on Sunday, not without a little trepidation. I’d been doing some macro photography and noticed that my sensor had a family of dust specks, small and large, littered across the surface. In fact when I looked closer it was more like the population of a small town.
I guess swapping lenses more frequently had let more dust in, but shooting at small apertures meant they were showing more. After I noticed this, about a week ago, I started to wonder what I could do.
Searching the web, I came across the following:
Dust in depth – http://www.photo.net/equipment/digital/sensorcleaning/
DIY cleaning – http://www.cleaningdigitalcameras.com/howto.html – a thorough review of all the techniqies that can be used, and at the bottom of the page a great little tip on how to prepare a test image (mine shown below) to check for dust.
I also found that Warehouse Express were selling an ‘Introductory Cleaning Kit‘ for not too much money.
Which brings me to Sunday. Armed with a good light, a clean table, kids removed from the house, and my new cleaning kit, I braced myself and went to work. As you can only use each swab once, and that’s just a quick swipe in each direction, it was almost a disappointment that it turned out so quick and easy. And the results? Well, see the images below. Not perfect, but way, way better than it had been, and at wider apertures I now can’t see anything. Phew.
That is really useful. I’ll be referring to this when I have to clean mine.