Peter's Photo Blog

For those of you who are new to cameras with interchangable lenses like the Canon Digital Rebel, this is something you should know. Every time you change the lens on your new DSLR, there's a chance that dust might get inside the camera body and on the sensor. While it's not a huge deal for a few pieces of dust to get in there, over time the dust accumulates and starts leaving little gray spots on your photos - a pet peeve of every digital SLR photographer. While you can avoid getting these spots by changing lenses quickly in a dust free environment, eventually you will want to clean the sensor.

When your sensor gets dirty there are a few options. Your local camera store probably offers a cleaning service to remove dust form the camera sensor but it's not going to be cheap. This service runs about $50 per cleaning here in Austin, TX. While it may be worth it for a professional photographer - I don't think the budding photographer on a budget wants to take the $50 hit every time the sensor needs cleaning (about once a year for me). Also, I don't really trust other people with my expensive gear.

If you are feeling adventurous, then this post is for you. Sensor cleaning is not that hard and you can do it on the cheap. I discovered a great resource all about DIY sensor cleaning online. http://www.pbase.com/copperhill/image/71784128 using this equipment http://www.pbase.com/copperhill/image/39082096. If you have the cash - I would recommend buying from Copper Hill b/c everything is custom built for cleaning digital sensors so theres less risk of damage to sensitive equipment.

But if you are adventurous like me, you can clean your sensor on the cheap. I ended up buying the Eclipse fluid which included 10 PEC cleaning pads from a local camera store. It ran me about $10. You can buy the Sensor cleanor w/ 10 pads for $7 on Amazon here: Photographic Solutions Eclipse Cleaner System. Ideal for All Glass Optics, Dries Instantly.

I didn't have the sensor cleaning tool that you can buy from the Copper Hill page, so I improvised using a plastic knife instead, which actually works great.

I also use a rubber "Hurricane" blower which can knock off some of the loose pieces of dirt that get stuck on your sensor. I blow loose dirt off the sensor every once in a while between full sensor cleanings. You can buy the hurricane blower on Amazon here: Hakuba Medium Blower Brush Plastic

So now that you know how to do it - How well does DIY sensor cleaning work? Here are my results from today:

Before any cleaning. I took a photo of a white piece of paper and used Photoshop to bring out the spots by increasing contrast with the Levels Tool.

Next, I tried to blow off loose dirt from the sensor with my bulb blower but just made it worse. THIS IS IMPORTANT - If your bulb blower has been sitting and gathering dust (literally) for a while, you should give it a few squeezes first to clean any dust out of the bulb before you stick it in the camera. I forgot to do this step and ended up blowing dust directly on to the sensor! look how much WORSE I made the problem by being careless. There was also probably loose dirt inside the camera that I blew on to the sensor too.

No problem though, the swabs are very effective. Here's my first pass at swabbing the sensor w/ the Eclipse + PEC pad solution. I got most of it except for the corners a big piece on the right side.

After another couple of passes, I got everything except for that one pesky fiber in the upper right.

A final blast of air from the hurricane blower got rid of that fiber and I only have one tiny spec on the bottom. Good enough for me!

A Real world test - A product shot with a white background - no spots at all!

UPDATE 09-15-07 - 8 months after this article, my sensor was filthy again. I cleaned my sensor again in Sept 2007 and got pretty much the same results. I figured out a few shortcuts to identifying the spots on the sensor as well Click here to see how my next sensor cleaning went.