No Products in the Cart
Dirty as a camera lens lid…
With apologies to Cilla Black…but there are times when we are all in that position. And we never seem to be close to a bathtub when we make the greatest mess.
I have long learned not to open my cameras in a paddock at seeding time. whether they were film types or digitals, I ended up importing more of the farm than I wanted. The whole problem was one that led me to purchase a sealed compact camera.
That was a good idea for a number of other reasons, and had I been in even more dirt I would have considered a waterproof camera as well - the Pentax, Nikon, and Olympus ones I’ve seen can be sealed to exclude dust just as easily as against water.
When I have been really foolish or unlucky it has been a case of resorting to professional repair shop cleaning - the external first and then the internals, with very careful sensor treatments. Expensive but worth it.
In the case of lesser contamination I’ve parked my heart in my throat and used commercial packets of sensor cleaning swabs with pre-dampened pads to wipe out stubborn spots. So far this has worked, but I am always nervous.
Short of that, the best result seems to be from a powerful blower brush - I’ve a LensPen one that incorporates a one-way valve so I do not load the rubber bulb with dust. As it is a no-touch solution, it is only suitable for the lighter and drier fragments.
On the lenses - and outside the camera - I depend upon the Lens Cleanse two-part wipe and dry packets. Our tech showed us how to use them for a complete safe clean and I trust them on the best optical glass I use. I brigade up the cleaning jobs as you can get several lenses done with one pair of tissues.
Note that even the dear old microfibre cloth is useful - if you give it a run through the washing machine to free it from collected oil and dirt.
Final note for scale modellers: The air blowers and the long, soft Giotto brushes are also great for maintaining cleanliness in your finished model cabinet. if you have strung aerial wires or ship’s rigging you are on your own, but short of that you should be able to keep the dust bunnies at bay.
Avoid darkroom canned air, unless you like searching through the carpet for bits you’ve blown off the model…
Text and Images by Richard Stein
