Cleaning Camera Sensor Bother

All, you may have noticed a slight streak in some of my images, I have noticed this for a while, and I thought it was a mark on the inside of one of my lenses, but now since I'm shooting prime focus, it's still there :evil: which means that my sensor chip on the 300D has some sort of streak on it.

I've looked at the manual, but all it really mentions is dust, blowing off gently with air etc., but It looks like I need to do more then that to clean it. I might have a go at cleaning ever so lightly with some lens cleaner and a lens cloth, but I think it's a big risk, Have any of you cleaned like this before.

The sensor does look very delicate, I'm afraid if I do this it's bye bye camera
:oops:

Keith..

I've looked at the manual, but all it really mentions is dust, blowing off gently with air etc., but It looks like I need to do more then that to clean it. I might have a go at cleaning ever so lightly with some lens cleaner and a lens cloth, but I think it's a big risk, Have any of you cleaned like this before.

Multiple times. I seem to have a nack for getting specs of dust on the sensor which show up at high fstops when taking pictures. To test how bad the dust is put a regular lens on, set the focus to infinity, the aperture to f29 (or however high you can), set exposure compensation to +1, and take a picture of a uniformly illuminated surface. The spots will show up very obviously.

Firstly I try compressed air to shift them. thats the easiest, and can often get the amount of dust below a tolerance that I'm hapy with. ie most day to day shooting.

If that doesnt shift it, or if you know you are going to be taking nice landscape shots for the day at f20+ you'll need to really clean the surface.

What I did was got my hands on the purest alcohol/methanol I could find, and cleaning swabs. The swabs I have seem to be made from chamois and don't deposit dust like other swabs.

The procedure I use is the 'open heart surgery' described at www.photo.net/equipment/digital/sensorcleaning/ note all the warnings!

On occasion I have spent several hours at this. Once you put things back together and take test images you may find that there is one new piece of dust somewhere and you have to start again.

hth,
Cheers,
~Albert

Hi Keith,

I had the same problem.
You can use a sensor pen, but they are a bit expensive (around €100 when I last checked).

Recently I bought one of the Hama mini vacuums in the local camera shop for it. I think it cost around €30. I wouldn't suggest using a blower as it will just move the dust around inside the camera.

If I notice any sensor dust I just generally use the vacuum and if there is any left I very very gently brush it with my blower brush.

If it is still there, then I regret that it would need a trip to the service dept.

Hope this helps.

Trev

You use a big Vacuum on the chip Trevor : just joking :lol:

Flats may cure the problem and avoid 'open heart surgery'... Just a thought if you felt very concerned.

Cheers

Dave

Keith,

I used cotton swabs to clean the sensor on mine and my girlfriends 350D and I usually have to do it every fortnight.

You can obtain the cotton swabs from the most photography shops from around €20 for a pack of 25.

Hope that helps

Darragh