Sensor spots?
- Thread starter Felisek
- Start date
sonicbuffalo_RIP
Senior Member
Well, first of all, you need not worry too much. You see, the sensor in your case is covered with a OLPF or in other words, a piece of glass that goes over the sensor, an anti aliasing filter. You won't be touching the filter itself, and will only be cleaning the filter, which is where the dust bunnies gather. I recommend you watch this video and try it yourself. Of course, I'm not responsible if you do something wrong, but thousands of people are cleaning their sensor/filters every day. You can do it and save yourself a bundle. Here's the video:
The Wet Method of Cleaning a Digital SLR Sensor - YouTube
Patrick M
Senior Member
Soap & water and a lint free cloth. Lucky I keep a filter on to protect the lens from this eventuality!
Did you (or photo department) use it on a sensor without low-pass filter? I just received the gel stick and the instruction manual talks about "cleaning the low-pass filter". I wonder if it is safe to use it directly on the sensor.
I doubt it's your sweat. Even with the lens removed, the sensor is not exposed - it's behind the mirror and the shutter. So unless you set the camera to Mirror Up and the Shutter to B and press the shutter, you will have a hard time trying to drop your sweat on the sensor.
Usually dust bunnies or specs (light and dry stuff) gets on the mirror or most commonly on the back of the lens (that's why rear cap is important.) and when the lens is back on and you take pictures with it, the mirror flaps up and down and stir up air current inside the mirror chamber. The air current dislodge the dust and eventually they land on the sensor. So, as you can see, it really takes some effort to get dust specs on the sensor.
Full disclosure: I work in a full service camera store (yes there's still a few left!) and we charge $60 for sensor cleaning. We also sell the gel type cleaning kit for $30 but most people opt to leave it for us to clean.
The LPF for optical anti-aliasing is a very thin - very very thin piece of glass (just minutely frosted or made of lithium niobate glass) installed over the sensor and then there is another piece very smooth optically "perfect" piece of glass over that - so you are never ever touching the sensor when you clean - you are cleaning that piece of glass. On cameras with no LPF, there is just a piece of plain glass over the sensor - so you are cleaning that piece of glass.
Because of the sandwich, one of the defects (which we have seen in older Canon Cameras) is a fungus growth can appear between the glass and the sensor - shows up as spiderly specs. Try as you might, it cannot be cleaned because it's between the sensor and the protective glass. (I have a Canon 10D with that problem - will see if I can take a picture to show you.)
So, clean away all you DIY'er and don't stress over it - you won't damage the sensor!