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Got called out by a retired repair guy for my cleaning routine
I used to clean every camera sensor with just a blower and a microfiber cloth. Last month a guy at the Portland Camera Show watched me do it and said 'you're just rubbing grit into the coating with that thing'. He showed me a $30 sensor cleaning kit with swabs and solution. I got stubborn at first but tried his method on a dusty Nikon D800. It came out perfectly clean on the first pass and I haven't touched a microfiber cloth to a sensor since. Has anyone else had a veteran repair person call them out on something they thought they knew?
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sagejackson2d ago
Funny you mention the Portland show - I was there too, but I had the opposite experience. Brought in a perfectly clean 5D Mark III sensor and had a different repair guy tell me my blower technique was "just moving the dust around inside the camera." He recommended I try a rocket blower with a longer nozzle and pointed it at the mirror box first. Turns out he was right - all those years I was blasting debris from the shutter mechanism right back onto the sensor. That little change saved me from having to buy swabs for another six months. Sometimes the old guys know stuff that isn't in the YouTube tutorials.
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waderamirez3d ago
Wait, so you're telling me my "aggressive dust eraser" technique was actually just sandpapering my sensor? I've got a D800 too and I'm pretty sure I've been giving mine a "vintage film grain" look for free. That Portland guy probably saved you from turning your Nikon into a Holga with autofocus.
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250 bucks for a rocket blower with a longer nozzle sounds steep but I did the same thing after watching some dude on YouTube swear by it. @sagejackson is right about that mirror box trick, I got a tiny bit of sensor dust after switching lenses in a windy park and a few puffs later it was gone. Never thought of blasting the shutter first, mostly just pointed it straight at the sensor like an idiot.
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