Review Eyelead Sensor Cleaning Gel Stick

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Having picked up a Eyelead Sensor cleaning pack at The Photography Show (aka Focus) in March and now used it to clean a few different camera sensors I thought I'd give this ingeniously simple product the praise it deserves.

I've always found sensor cleaning to be a PITA, I've tried most different solutions from Lenspen's Sensorklear to full wet cleans using Eclipse fluid etc, wet clean still the most thorough way to do it but I found also the most difficult to do well. Not to mention I also managed to scratch the AA filter on a D700 doing a wet clean, surprisingly easily.

Enter the Eyelead gel stick thing, really simple to use, you have a small cube of sticky gel on the end of a plastic holder, you dab the face of the cube on the sensor, remove vertically and then place down on the supplied sticky paper. The paper is stickier than the gel cube so when you carefully pull them apart any dust stays on the paper. I was really apprehensive that this would work as well as the reviews suggest but it really is very effective and easy to do. I've cleaned the sensors on my 3 D3s's, my D610 and my sons D40. The sensors on two of the D3s were really bad and due to be sent into Nikon for a clean, but apart from one stubborn dust spot in the corned the Eyelead stick did the job perfectly. The one remaining dust spot I removed with a Sensorklear and then dabbed the gel stick over the top to remove the residue they sometimes leave.

The lady at the show said that these were going to be sold by Jessops and other retailers later this year, the company are based in Germany but the product can be bought now on Amazon. They are around £35 and come with 10 sticky papers (you can buy more), I'd say those 10 are comfortably enough for 5 thorough cleans. She did say to be wary of fakes and cheap imitations found on eBay, there are stories out there where the gel comes away from the stick, leaves marks on the sensors etc and these are apparently because of dodgy far east copies of the product.

Hope that helps someone, and I'm not associated with Eyelead in anyway btw...
 
They do seem a good idea (a LARGE spec-grabber in effect) & many are happy with the results, BUT, there are many who have tried these & it's made things worse!
Maybe the `cheaper` Chinese type jobbies aren't as good? but also if there is any hint of oil/lubricant on the sensor, it spreads it all over & makes a real mess.
I guess if you are sure it's only dust they should be fine.
 
They do seem a good idea (a LARGE spec-grabber in effect) & many are happy with the results, BUT, there are many who have tried these & it's made things worse!
Maybe the `cheaper` Chinese type jobbies aren't as good? but also if there is any hint of oil/lubricant on the sensor, it spreads it all over & makes a real mess.
I guess if you are sure it's only dust they should be fine.

I do wonder if some at least of the reports online are because people are unknowingly using what essentially is a cheap immitation. If you have oil on your sensor then you only have one option anyway, but it is a good point. I was very sceptical before using it and very surprised how well it did, but then I hate wet cleaning.
 
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