How to CLEAN you sensor with cotton swabs
What you'll need:
- A bright workspace with little to no dust flying around
- Cotton swabs/buds/Qtips [important note: always switch to a new clean cotton swab at every step]
- (If removing OIL) some sort of cleaning agent that doesn't leave residue (I'll be using electronic contact cleaner)
- A rocket blower
How it's done:
Place your camera on the table without a lens. For cameras that don't close their shutter when off I recommend turning the camera OFF. For cameras that do close their shutter, you'll have engage sensor cleaning mode.
As you can see, my sensor is very dirty. I added extra dust on it for effect.
First, you'll use you rocket blower to blow off any loose dust and debris. If you don't have a rocket blower, just learn how to blow gently without spitting, but I highly recommend buying a rocket blower - it's powerful and fast.
Take out one cotton swab and pull with your nails or some pliers (to avoid getting any oil from your skin on the swab) from the top of the cotton so we can make it fluffy.
Brush off any loose debris from the sensor. We aren't appling any pressure. Let the loose fibres on the swab do the job. Try to brush from left to right across the whole sensor multiple times.
All the dirt removed. Only a tiny fibre left bottom left corner.
Do another rocket blower pass to remove any leftover fibres on sensor and you are done.
What about OIL?
A drop of salty and spicy olive oil from my dinner, yummy.
Let's try and collect it, oh no, it is spreading it out!!!
First thing you'll do is use a fluffy cotton swab and gently brush the oil. We want to collect as much as we can.
Next we'll use contact cleaner (or whatever residueless cleaner you have).
I completely saturated a fluffed up cotton swab with contact cleaner and swiped the whole sensor from left to right, top to bottom. If you see a lot of residue left on the sensor you can repeat the process with another fluffy swab + cleaner.
After the contect cleaner - tiny dust and remnant streaks of oil?
After you are done with the contact cleaner, time to rocket blow, then take another fluffy swab and lets brush + polish the remaining imperfections out.
This time after gently wiping with the pulled out fibres I went in and rested the main cotton body on the sensor. In a circular motion I'll polish all left over spots out. No force used!
Another rocket blower pass for good measure and the sensor is cleaned!
A happy sensor :)
My current gear:
Cameras:
Lenses:
Flash: Godox V860III + 2x TT685II
Tripod: Zomei Q555
Phone: Samsung S10
Additional:
It's a real delicate process
Greetings @sulev ,
What an excellent set of cleaning instructions you have presented here....step-by-step...thank you!
Cheers!
This is an incredibly detailed and helpful guide for cleaning camera sensors, thanks for sharing!
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