CT
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I've never had a very anally retentive approach to sensor cleaning - probably because spotting out small dust bunnies on a digital shot is very little hassle compared to laboriously hand spotting prints from film - anyone who's ever done it will know exactly what I mean! However, an evening recently spent scrolling around interpolated 50mb stock images dealing with dust bunnies was no fun at all, so a job I'd put off for long enough was obviously well overdue.
Having looked at the variety of sensor cleaning products on the market, I opted for the Arctic Butterfly sensor cleaning brush. Knowing that the vast majority of dust is just loose and mobile, I didn't want to use a wet cleaning solution with the attendant risks of smearing - time to do that when you have what the pros call 'welded' dust.
Initially, I used the brush and kept taking the f22 test shots, cleaning, taking the test shots again, cleaning, and so on till I got a clean result. Very time consuming and laborious. With a view to removing this part of the cleaning process I bought the Visible Dust sensor loupe.
The loupe comes in a nicely padded zipped leatherette case and is also enclosed in a soft draw string pouch. A lens cleaning cloth is also included for cleaning the lens on the loupe. Included in the box are two small button batteries which need to be inserted in the loupe, then by simply sliding the 'ON' switch, six LEDs spaced around the inside of the loupe light up with an intensity which has to be seen to be believed. In use the loupe is held over the lens opening and a magnification of up to 5X can be achieved by moving the loupe back and forth. It can also be angled to examine any corner of the sensor.
The light from the loupe is an intense blue/white and any dust on the sensor in easily visible seeming to be quite fluorescent under the light. A couple of passes across the sensor, spinning the Arctic Light brush in between each pass, is all that's required to remove the larger bunnies and those are the ones you're after. The bottom line is there is always going to be dust on your sensor, but the smaller ones aren't going to be visible in your shots anyway, and how often do you shoot at F22?
No more laborious F22 test shots is the best thing - the job can now be done very easily in just a few minutes. I've used it on both my camera bodies and so far haven't had to spot out a single dust bunny in a couple of weeks.
There's a video of the loupe in use in the below link, and it really is as easy as it's shown in the video.
http://www.visibledust.com/products3.php?pid=600
Having looked at the variety of sensor cleaning products on the market, I opted for the Arctic Butterfly sensor cleaning brush. Knowing that the vast majority of dust is just loose and mobile, I didn't want to use a wet cleaning solution with the attendant risks of smearing - time to do that when you have what the pros call 'welded' dust.
Initially, I used the brush and kept taking the f22 test shots, cleaning, taking the test shots again, cleaning, and so on till I got a clean result. Very time consuming and laborious. With a view to removing this part of the cleaning process I bought the Visible Dust sensor loupe.
The loupe comes in a nicely padded zipped leatherette case and is also enclosed in a soft draw string pouch. A lens cleaning cloth is also included for cleaning the lens on the loupe. Included in the box are two small button batteries which need to be inserted in the loupe, then by simply sliding the 'ON' switch, six LEDs spaced around the inside of the loupe light up with an intensity which has to be seen to be believed. In use the loupe is held over the lens opening and a magnification of up to 5X can be achieved by moving the loupe back and forth. It can also be angled to examine any corner of the sensor.
The light from the loupe is an intense blue/white and any dust on the sensor in easily visible seeming to be quite fluorescent under the light. A couple of passes across the sensor, spinning the Arctic Light brush in between each pass, is all that's required to remove the larger bunnies and those are the ones you're after. The bottom line is there is always going to be dust on your sensor, but the smaller ones aren't going to be visible in your shots anyway, and how often do you shoot at F22?
No more laborious F22 test shots is the best thing - the job can now be done very easily in just a few minutes. I've used it on both my camera bodies and so far haven't had to spot out a single dust bunny in a couple of weeks.
There's a video of the loupe in use in the below link, and it really is as easy as it's shown in the video.
http://www.visibledust.com/products3.php?pid=600
