SENSOR CLEANING - ADVICE - PRODUCTS - LINKS -

It's free (assuming your DSLR is made by Canon, of course). Just drop off the camera at any Canon service center and pick it up 2 days later.

I had NO IDEA it was FREE!

most excellent!

WOW! Really ive never heard that before?!! Should come in handy when I get my 30D in a couple of weeks!

It would be fascinating if someone who speaks Japanese could translate the poster from the Canon kit. It looks like a wet swabbing kit from the pictures, or does someone want to disagree with that.


I think you'll find that free cleaning is limited to cameras in warranty, and possibly to CPS members. The best I've heard of is one or possibly two free cleans in warranty, plus a free clean if any other repair work is done on the body - and this comes with potentially a week or two's delay. I've also heard of sensor filters (we need to be clear here - you are not cleaning the sensor itself, but the filter that's over it) coming back more dirty than when the camera went in for service.

Fixation, who are a major independently-owned Canon service centre in London, charge £25 plus VAT for crop sensors and £50 plus VAT for full frame sensors - see here for details. They also sell cleaning swabs, Eclipse, and Visible Dust brushes.


I've just ordered the CopperHill Ultimate "Euro" Care Kit, together with the battery powered blower availble as part of this kit (I emailed Nicolas first to sort out how to do this without paying two shipping charges). I also ordered some Eclipse fluid from Camera Depot, who don't charge shipping on the order. CopperHill can't ship Eclipse internationally.

What that will give me is all the items in the CopperHill Mega DSLR Care Kit.


Throw in some items I already have - a craft knife (for slitting open a pack of PecPads), some tweezers (for pulling a PecPad out of the pack without getting fingerprint oils all over the pad you're pulling and those left in the pack), some grip-seal plastic bags (to put the open pack of PecPads in and for storing other items as dust free as possible), some disposable medical grade vinyl gloves (to stop getting fingerprints over everything, including the PecPad when you're folding it - vinyl gloves are less likely to residual powder compared to "powder free" latex) and some Scotch Magic Tape in a dispenser (to stick the folded up pad together on the spatula), and I should be set.

This way, I have a blower option (I already have a Rocket Blower), a brush option and a wet swabbing option. I can practice as much as I like with an old screw-on filter before going anywhere near my sensor filter. If I'm not happy with the results on my filter cleaning trials, I haven't spent that much, the brush may come in useful for lifting dusting off lens elements and filters, the blower will come in somewhere else as will the PecPads. If everything works out, I have a very clean but fairly useless low grade single coated Skylight filter.

I'm more than likely to blow my sensor filter (but I've got a few bits stuck too tightly for that to work now), then brush it (Petteri Sulonen's instructions make a lot of sense to me - that's listed in the second post of this thread as "Prime Junta" and in the first post as "Pixel Sweeper"), and only resort to wet swabbing if it turns out I have something stuck and after a lot of practice with my old filter. PecPads and Eclipse aren't that expensive - indeed, I already have an almost full pack of PecPads that have been handled in the low dust fashion I described earlier.


I agonised over the alternatives.

The Visible Dust brushes are very well thought out in terms of what's in the kits, but ludicrously expensive - if you buy a complete kit, you could spend £200. That's not much less than the cost of an Extender II 1.4x, and more than a couple of "nifty fifty" (EF 50mm f/1.8 II) lenses. I find it interesting that Visible Dust now have swabs in their range.

The Green Clean product seemed quite attractive, but the 'tips' of the vacuum need replacing frequently, their propellant cans are expensive and bulky, I can see the risk of accidentally touching the tip of the vacuum on the sensor filter and if all else fails, their technique resorts to swabs for dirt that's stuck. You can't fly with the canister, either, and I worry how fragile the whole setup may be if put in a camera bag. Nevertheless, I may get one of their vacuum setups at some point - I can see how it might be useful for grabbing dust from lens rear elements (particularly if they're recessed) and similar.

I do, cautiously, use a LensPen on my front elements and filters, and I find it works extremely well, particularly in the field. I blow both the brush and the pen end several times with a blower to try to eliminate contaminants, and I won't use it on a surface that hasn't already been carefully blown free of dust with a blower. They do produce a special product for sensor filters - see here, but essentially what you're doing is wiping your sensor filter with a piece of microfibre cloth. Whilst I find the technique not too messy in terms of where the cleaning compound goes, I wouldn't want to introduce graphite powder to my chamber.

The pre-made swabs for wet swabbing from the likes of Photographic Solutions (makers of PecPads and Eclipse) seemed attractive too, but they're ludicrously expensive. I accept Nicolas' (CopperHill) argument here that they're not really necessary. They're great if you're going to use them in a clean room environment, but as soon as you open them in the real world, they're not in a clean room, nor is your sensor chamber a clean room in use.


If PecPads are OK for negatives, they should be fine for a glass sensor filter (Nicolas picks up on that further down on the page I mentioned earlier in this paragraph - see at the right under "Important Note").


Finally, as Fixation point out here, "dust on the rear elements of other lenses will quickly transfer into the mirror box and onto the sensor as soon as the equipment is used". You've got to keep your rear elements clean as well - so use your rear lens caps, and clean your rear elements and mounts. I've never had to use more than a Rocket Blower for this.

The rear element is much nearer the focal plane than the front element of a lens. A speck or two on the front element is likely to do very little to your picture (I've even heard of people putting small round sticky labels on a filter to demonstrate). A speck or two on your rear element is very likely to show.

David

EXCELLENT summary David, thanks for that

Has anyone ever tried "CleanSkies" sensor brushes. I found some on ebay and their pretty cheap.

I wouldn't trust brushes from eBay. You don't know what quality control applies to the brushes. If you're happy to use the "filter test" (test first on a screw-on filter) and potentially mess around cleaning a brush, then it may be worth it (it's likely to be less hit and miss than buying make up brushes), but my personal assessment is that the saving over ordering from CopperHill isn't worth it.

Your choice, though.

David

More on the (seemingly official) Canon kit here. It sounds like a (single use?) adhesive based system.

David

I ordered the SensorSweep II from Coperhill in the end. Didn't realise they shipped to the UK and it only ended up costing around 2 pounds more anyhow.

Though I've yet to get my kit from CopperHill, they do ship internationally (apart from Eclipse), and I've had some valuable email exchanges with Nicholas at CopperHill.

Amongst our emails, he suggests totally decontaminating the SensorSweep II brush by immersing the filaments in boiling water for about 30 seconds, then comments that once the tip gets wet, it will take at least 8 hours to dry completely. I wondered whether you could drip a few drops of Eclipse onto it and blot it on a PecPad before letting it dry - he's fairly confident that Eclipse wouldn't damage the filaments, but his suggested method was with boiling water.

David

CopperHill's shipping and customer service

My CopperHill kit turned up on Friday morning at my house in the UK, having left CopperHill on Monday via USPS Global Express. It finished up being delivered by Parcelforce as Parcelforce 24. There was no VAT, duty or other charges to pay, though it was probably worth a little over what should have been let in without charges. The packaging was good.

The Eclipse fluid that I ordered in the UK turned up earlier in the week. Emails were answered quickly and courteously by Nicholas at CopperHill.


The cleaning experience and results

I set to this afternoon. A critical look at a defocussed ceiling shot at f/22 made me realise that I needed to swab my 20D's sensor filter. I found it quite tricky removing the PecPad that CopperHill had fitted to the SensorSwipe after I'd experimented with it. Once that was gone, I found Scotch Magic Tape worked well for me, and was fairly easy to slice through with the blade of my desk scissors.

I got through quite a few PecPads learning the wrapping trick. A couple of times I hit the sides of the chamber when approaching the sensor, and didn't want to take the risk of rubbing a potentially contaminated swab on the sensor filter, so if I thought I'd hit the sides, I discarded that PecPad and started again.

PecPads are not horrendously expensive, and are available in the UK (so no need to pay international shipping to get some more). In fact, I already had a pack of PecPads that had been opened by slitting along one end then keeping in a grip-seal bag, so I decided to keep using that pack.


I actually swabbed the sensor filter three times.

The first time, my technique was a bit off, even though, as suggested, I practiced first on a filter and a CD case. I left dust at the edges.

The second time I did better, helped by putting on a head torch, but I managed to introduce a couple of bigger pieces of dust to the chamber, which I rescued with my SensorSwipe II brush so as not to rub them against the sensor when swabbing again. I think I'd got some dust on the rear element of the lens I fitted to test the camera.

The third swabbing got all but about three of my original spots, which were faded somewhat by this stage. At that point, I decided to call a halt, especially as Nicholas' instructions suggests that leaving the camera for a few days before trying again can help in getting stubborn spots. I very much doubt that those spots will be visible at more normal apertures anyway - it's rare that I exceed f/11. I've dramatically reduced the dirt on my sensor.


Hints and tips for the CopperHill swabbing technique

I never felt any need to don gloves - though I'm reasonably familiar with careful working practices from my days as an academic chemist and more recently having to carry out sterile medical procedures on myself. If you keep your fingers away from all but the edges of the PecPad nearest the handle of the SensorSwipe you should be fine without gloves, and you'll probably find it easier to handle the items without gloves.

Once I'd closed the window and the door, I took a fine spraygun and sprayed some water into the air in an attempt to drag down any floating dust (a bit like the idea of running the shower on cold if you work in the bathroom). The water didn't take long to settle, and who knows - it may have helped.

I found it easier to fold the PecPad around the SensorSwipe with the grain of the PecPad running perpendicular to the direction of the SensorSwipe's handle. I don't know whether that's the intention, though I did find a page on the CopperHill web site commenting that the pack was slit with the grain of the pad. I suspect this is the same way round as I have the pack - it's best to pick up the pad at the end of the fibres, as the end will remain away from your sensor. I'd say decent tweezers are a must.

My Scotch Magic Tape dispenser was ideal both for tape to keep the PecPad in place on the SensorSwipe, and to stand up the SensorSwipe (I found that if I put the handle vertically alongside the tape reel, it stood up neatly away from the desk).

I found no need to put the camera on a tripod - I found that sitting the bottom of the camera on the desk and angling it up towards me and my head torch worked well enough.

A pair of sharp scissors were useful for slicing through the tape on the PecPad.


I found it easiest to work in this order:

• remove the lens and sit it on the desk with front and rear lens caps fitted
  
• fit a body cap to the body
  
• slice the tape and remove the old PecPad from the SensorSwipe
  
• stand the SensorSwipe in my tape dispenser
  
• squeeze the pack of PecPads to the top of the grip-seal bag, then open the grip-seal bag and hold it in my left hand
  
• retrieve a PecPad from the pack with my tweezers, holding it in the air
  
• allow the PecPads to fall to the bottom of the grip-seal bag, then fold the bag over and place it on the desk
  
• pick up the SensorSwipe with my left hand, and offer the PecPad to it with the tweezers
  
• hold one side of the PecPad against the handle end of the rubber part of the SensorSwipe with a finger, grasp the other side of the PecPad with the tweezers and fold it over the SensorSwipe, taking care not to touch the middle of the PecPad
  
• follow Nicholas' instructions to wrap and tape the SensorSwipe
  
• put two drops of Eclipse on the end of the SensorSwipe as indicated in Nicholas' instructions (all you need to do is tip the Eclipse bottle just past horizontal)
  
• stand the SensorSwipe in the tape dispenser
  
• pick up the camera, remove the body cap and set to Sensor Cleaning mode
  
• angle the camera on the desk with my left hand
  
• pick up the SensorSwipe with my right hand and swab following Nicholas' instructions
  
• turn the camera off
  
• remove the rear cap from the lens and fit the lens
  
• take a defocussed shot of the ceiling at f/22 (waving the camera around a bit to lose all image detail so that you just leave the dust)
  
• check the image at the computer

I heard Canon Service center in NJ does a free sensor cleaning while you wait (30 minutes), even for out of warranty cameras. I have a dirty sensor, will go and check that out This offer is not available if you mail in.

chakras wrote:
I heard Canon Service center in NJ does a free sensor cleaning while you wait (30 minutes), even for out of warranty cameras. I have a dirty sensor, will go and check that out This offer is not available if you mail in.

Really?? That's a good option if true. It's only 45 miles away.

QUESTION: How much does an average sensor cleaning cost from Canon if I were to send it in? I'm planning on calling tomorrow but just wanted to know if someone had a quick answer from their experience.

Simon King wrote:
Dalmation! I wish I could read it!

go here: http://babelfish.altav​ista.com/ and copy and paste the blog link into babelfish.. and select from japanese to english. u'll get a rough translation of it.

I use a Rocket Blower.

Anything other than blowers or Canon service cleaning will void you warrenty.