cleaned sensor, and I SCRATCHED SENSOR!!!

very sorry to hear about this. I know it's stressful when something happens to your camera. I hope it's easily and not expensively resolved.

I Simonius wrote in post #3907804
ahh , we're supposed to clean the snsor in church! - that explains where people go so wrong

Yup allowing gods holy light to fall on the sensor is certain to remove dust, smears, scratches etc as well as banishing any demons lurking within the camera.

dou_b_14 wrote in post #3984358
yup....it cost $500 and some change... got it back a few days ago....works beautifully now....not sure if im seeing things, but picture quality seems a little better than before.

ouch! i figured it would cost you about that.. its really to bad. did they tell you anything about what might have happened? i did see someone saying something about the the first 5D's having a different coating over the sensor then newer ones. something about the cleaner removing this coating, making it looked scratched?

nice to have it back tho eh...

RichNY wrote in post #3986112
It seems absurd to me that these mfgs. can't put an optically clear piece of glass in place so that cleaning becomes a no-brainer.

Wouldn't help
Glass has a Mohs hardness of 5.5 with some being a little harder.
Common dust often goes up too 7, that's up too ~30x as hard as most common glass.
dust wins most of the time.
Now a diamond coating would work wonders.

strmrdr wrote in post #3987959
Now a diamond coating would work wonders.

It may not be that far away, but maybe quartz or sapphire in the meantime?

I'm waiting for a diamond frying pan though.

bonefish wrote in post #3986818
Yup allowing gods holy light to fall on the sensor is certain to remove dust, smears, scratches etc as well as banishing any demons lurking within the camera.

I would have thoug that the sunlight streaming through the stained glass, showing up every 'mote' as it does would be the 'mot'ive for doing it in church:p

xarqi wrote in post #3988114
I'm waiting for a diamond frying pan though.

you fry diamonds???

i just scratched my sensor today as well.

i've been reading up about it all...was very careful as well...and somehow scratched it!

was using a swab to clean it...and somehow i made a small scratch (visible with the eye).

when i take photos i don't see it though (which i'm thankful for)....u can only see it when i take photos at f22 of a white background and adjust the levels PP....

but still..it's quite frustrating!

Sure it's a scratch, not a streak from too much fluid, or from lubricant on the sensor? Give it a second wet cleaning and see if it changes at all. If it does, then keep at it (new swab each time, and by "swab", I assume you mean a Sensor Swab or the like, not an ordinary cotton swab) until it's gone. If it doesn't, there was already damage; you won't make the cost of a repair any worse.

yes i'm sure it's not a streak from too much fluid...and i do have the proper cleaning swabs and solution...LOL

i'm thankful that it's not a big scratch...u can barely see it in the photos even when i'm shooting at the smallest aperture...but nonetheless it's still annoying...

here's a photo of the sensor with levels adjusted PP.

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I'm not convinced that its a scratch. I see a blob underneath the streak and a couple of blobs in the lower right corner. Either way you can't hurt anything by giving it a couple more swabs. I'd try doing a vertical swab on the right side of the sensor as you're looking at it.

DDan wrote in post #4114630
I'm not convinced that its a scratch. I see a blob underneath the streak and a couple of blobs in the lower right corner. Either way you can't hurt anything by giving it a couple more swabs. I'd try doing a vertical swab on the right side of the sensor as you're looking at it.

I agree. There very first time I cleaned my 30d I had the same scratch which turned out to just be streak of some kind of lubrication that is used in the camera at assembly. After I restarted my heart I calmly took another swipe at it and it came right off.

KarlMarsh wrote in post #4114687
I agree. There very first time I cleaned my 30d I had the same scratch which turned out to just be streak of some kind of lubrication that is used in the camera at assembly. After I restarted my heart I calmly took another swipe at it and it came right off.

Yep. Thats why I mentioned it. I thought I had destroyed my 400D with one swipe. Each swab after that got a little better and I eventually got it clean. Mine looked worse than this by far. I'm hoping cornflakes sensor is still good.

NIcholas, you are the most incredibly arrogant company representative I've ever heard. You're doing nothing but blaming your customer. You should take a class in business communications or customer relations and use another approach. Even if your customer is to blame, you don't tell him he is to blame. Additionally, you should re-engineer your system so that people "who don't take it seriously" can still use the system effectively. In other words, make it people-proof and fail-safe.

KarlMarsh wrote in post #4114687
I agree. There very first time I cleaned my 30d I had the same scratch which turned out to just be streak of some kind of lubrication that is used in the camera at assembly. After I restarted my heart I calmly took another swipe at it and it came right off.

when i noticed that scratch while i was cleaning it, i tried swabbing it again...

i did another wet swab followed by another dry and the scratch still remained..

i even did a vertical wet swab over the scratch and it still remains.....i've yet to try it again...

i'm almost certain it's a scratch, albeit a very very light one....

i took a photo of the sky before at f22..the scratch does show in the photo but is very faint.....of course, at f2.8 i see nothing.....it's not something that absolutely stands out...

i also did test shots at f22 of normal subjects/scenery, and i cannot see the scratch at all in the photos...so i guess i'm quite happy with that...

thanks very much for your optimism guys! i was being optimistic as well when i first saw the scratch....but when i tried a 2nd wet swab (including a vertical swab over the scratch) and the mark remained, i lost hope and knew i f#$%ed up...

for now, i am leaving my sensor as is....it's clean and i don't wish to get in their and dig around anymore...

i will keep u guys updated after my next sensor clean...lol

amfoto1 wrote in post #3908708
Hi all,

First, I want to compliment Nicholas for being proactive, forthright and up front, for staying in touch with his customers ........

..... Note: I'm personally pretty skeptical about the "dust shaker" vibrators now being built into some cameras.......

Also note in Curt's article that Canon's own cleaning method is described as using a "home brew" of 90% isopropyl alcohol or a 50/50 mix of isopropyl alcohol and Windex.........

First of all -- very good post. I don't like to see Internet lynch mobs formed at the first suggestion of a problem -- even when the OP didn't even suggest anything other than it appears that he scratched his sensor.

It may help if I share my first cleaning experience. In my case, the "dust" was from very fine green wood dust (meaning that it had the potential for drying like paint). After making a wipe with a sensor Swab, I saw several horrible long streaky smears (looked more like boogers) that apparently formed when the alcohol partially dissolved the organic goop composed of lignum, cellulose, turpentine, and whatnot. The few drops of E2 apparently smeared it, but was not enough to remove it. After several wasted pads, I decided to put about 4 or 5 drops on each side of the pad and do about three very light wipes each direction just to distribute the alcohol and then quickly followed this with a normal wipe using a new pad with only two drops of E2 on each side. I was very encouraged to find that this helped tremendously, but I still has some problems with a few spot right next to two of the corners. One of the problems that I was having with wiping the AA/IR glass was that the pads were a bit wide and fit very tightly in the recess where the AA/IR filter resides.

I called the cleaning "good enough" for the time being. Then, over the following months, I performed several more cleanings and became a bit more confident and skilled. The result is that any remaining "spots" are hardly visible over the background noise when I adjust Levels to maximize visibility of the spots.

I, too, am skeptical of the ultrasonic shaker. I think that it might work on "true" dust -- meaning stuff like lint or dry inorganic particulate matter. I suspect that other wet things like pollen, wood dust, and small particles containing VOC's are too much of a challenge for the shaker. I also have some serious difficulty in believing that almost weightless particles are somehow going to just drop like a lead weight to the eagerly awaiting sticky tarpit along the bottom of the mirror box. I envision another scenario -- the high frequency vibration causes the particles to pick up a static charge as they are kicked away and this is immediately followed by the charged particles being drawn right back to the vibrating plate because of the electrostatic charge.

The "home brew" that you described sounds almost the same as the mixtures that some astronomers use on their telescope mirrors and corrector plates, as well as other optics.The importance of not scratching a mirror is at least as critical as not scratching the camera sensor. I have always wondered what happens to the stuff in Windex that does not evaporate. I think that astronomers follow up with distilled water. I have just recently gotten into astronomy so I am still coming u to speed on cleaning optics.