Keeping your gear clean

When you get out to exercise, I trust you are taking your camera, or at least your smartphone, to take the opportunity to also exercise your photographic muscles. There is then the issue should you also disinfect your gear when you get home, The answer especially now is yes,  cameras and phones are something that you think nothing of bringing up to your face, for some time and there a couple of other important issues.

1. Do not share your phone or camera with anyone you meet.
2. Just putting it back in your camera bag is not enough.
3. Wash your hands (thoroughly) as soon as you get home (you are more likely to be a source of infectious than your camera).
4. Avoid using liquids to clean or disinfect any gear. (alcohol wipes may be out but probably unnecessary)

So when you get home take all you gear out of the bag and wipe it down with a microfiber cloth (the type you get from the supermarket as fine, they don't have to be black with a camera manufacturer's name on them. Take the opportunity to clean any lenses you used. It is not necessary to clean your sensor unless you change lens on a windy dusty day,, and that's not recommended anyway. You should wash the microfiber in soapy water, rinse and dry thoroughly before re-using.

Derrick Story goes into a lot more detail in his podcast "How to Disinfect Your Gear." The link goes to his show notes as well the podcast, as he has a some important sources of information there.

Post Beach Cleanup

I realise that painting and photographing an endless summer will involve a number of beach visit. Fine sand being the natural enemy of precision camera components, and particular hard on SLR camera. Thus I have designated my canon camera for beach duty. Not that I haven’t used my Pentax many times already at the beach. However the Canon camera bag is smaller and seems a tighter so less likely to fill with sand (or so I thought). after a few days of such beach duty The camera and bag had fine sand everywhere, so before I looked at dust on the inside I got out my hairdryer (I have one to dry watercolours) and gave it a good cool blast and use a soft watercolour wash brush to dust as I went. I also emptied the camera bag, took it outside, turned it upside down and gave it a long blast with the hair drier. That fine sand is pesky stuff but it does respond to a strong air flow.

HOWEVER SET THE HAIR DRYER TO COOL!  be careful not to overheat the camera or components

The all important question remains. What about dust on the sensor? Well I didn’t change lenses at the beach and the sensor appears to have no more dust than usual.

PhotoFriday :: Time to Clean

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Clean

Dust, the natural enemy of DLSRs

Trying to photography in the Saudi Arabian Desert has highlighted the issues of dust and (mirrored) DSLR cameras. Basically each time the mirror folds up to take a picture and exposes the sensor. The desert wind pick up fine sand particles and dust and it penetrates everything from your ears, anything you touch and eat, even to filling your back pocket. When you change lens for example some dust can find its way inside your camera and onto the sensors. Leaving those annoying little spots on your image. The image above has the very clear black spot of a fine sand particle but also so many ghosted dots (also dust) that I gave up pointing to them all, in the photo above.

So what can you do about it?

The first thing to remember there are now good tools to recover any photos you have taken that have unfortunate spots. These are generally versions of cloning tools that allow you copy the texture/detail for a nearby area over the spot and thus erase it. In lighroom this is called the spot removal tools and cab be found in the development module. In Picasa it is called Retouched and found in the basic edit tools. In AfterShot Pro it is called heal (which just fixes circular blemishes like dust) and is found in their layer manager.
The better solution is to clean your sensor of dust as soon as you detect it. This is relatively easy for most camera but a few makers and models do recommend that you get the camera cleaned by the company or their designated agents (and that can be expensive!) For the rest of use check you camera manual and carefully follow the instructions. Some cameras like my Pentax K20D has a sensor shake mechanism to dislodge dusk particles, and often can do this at start-up. However bi also just find the setting to clean the sensor which lift the mirror and expose the lens. With the lens remove i them a conventional blower with the brush removes and with the camera upside down I give the sensor a good blast of air. Remember you must never touch the sensor with anything, hold the blower a couple centimetres away (approx. 1”) below the sensor and squeeze the bubble several times pointing at different parts of the sensor. I find this approach works well, if the dust is fresh. If the dust have been there a while it may take a couple of cleanings to get rid of all the spots. I have previously posted that a good way to find dust spots is to photograph a clear sky.

I have found giving my camera a strange turban-like bit of head gear, made from a face washer rather than the traditional tea towel patterned cloth in the saudi style, and a rubber band has helped a lot. Although it will never be white again. Those familiar with hitch hiker’s guide to the galaxy will know that a small towel is an essential travel necessity, (especially so for a photographers). And importantly I don’t change lenses out in the open.

Clipping Magic

Whilst I know the bigger software groups like Adobe and Corel are trying to provide packages that do everything. I have always been happy with a really good, and usually very simple, utility program that just does the thing I want. Ok like Apps on your phone such utilities can quickly grow into a big menagerie. Yet they usually let you get the job done quietly and efficiently.The same logic really applies to on-line applications. There are more and more becoming available, particularly with google's promotion of chrome. One such application that you need to check out for yourself is called clipping magic, and its still just and Alpha release. I know that Adobe's photoshop and Corel's power clipping can do much the same job but you need a few weeks of learning and a fair bit of skill to use them. Clipping Magic is actually really simple, you just need to draw a bit of green on the "foreground" (the part you want to clip to keep) and red over a few parts of the "background" (the part of the image you want to remove. It really is that simple and at the moment its free to try out.

Dust Devil in the Detail

I wrote long ago about DSLR’s “dirty little secret”, dust on the sensor. Back in the film days and dust on the film plane generally stuck on the film and “ruined” just a single image. However in a digital camera dust on the sensor just sits there and leads to blemishes on frame after frame. Dust tends not to be a problem in compact cameras and cameraphones because they are sealed, but an SLR that takes different lens has a mechanical mirror that simply sits in front of the sensor and when the the lens is being changed the internal parts of the camera including the sensor behind the mirror are effetely open to the environment. Dust or fine sand particles, even insects can easily find their way to the sensor and because the sensor is frequently charged up and discharges as it records images and small statically charged particles are frequently attracted and stick to the sensor. So first rule is obviously not change lenses in a sand storm, or even a breezy day, or at least be careful. I take my cameras into a lots of hostile environments and I’m convinced with care and cleanliness in handling you will be fine but dust can suddenly turn up at the least expected times. Sometimes it is very obvious, like the dark shadow on the image below, and sometimes it is more subtle, like the fainter shadow on the left.

Some Cameras, like my Pentax which took the above photo, have special mechanisms that shake the mirror and this can be set to be operated manually or automatically at start up. Others like my canon have a feature that lets you photograph a plain white, or near white background, then detects dust marks and gives you the opportunity to remove then from the image beginning captured. Nice enough features but  still think that being able to manually cleans the sensor is the best option. [I must add a disclaimer here that may just be an urban myth, or worse a ranson-ware style fear campaign. There are lots of posts on camera and photographic sites that warn that manual cleaning a sensor may void a camera’s warranty. So check you cameras manual before you fork out a lot on having your camera “cleaned”] The procedure is pretty safe but requires the camera having a set up feature that will lift the mirror (both the Pentax and the canon have this feature). It is important that this next step is performed carefully, you simply need to use a gentle air stream to blow over the face of the sensor and carefully blow off the small particles. The sooner you get the dust of the easier it will be shift. Never use a brush or cloth on the surface of the sensor, Just a few simple puffs that direct a gentle airflow over the sensor is generally all that is needed. I have an old style lens blower brush and I simply remove the brush and use the blower by itself. but you can buy special compressed gas sprayers specially designed to clean cameras and lens if you want to spend a little extra. If you camera can be cleaned in this way you should find sufficient detail of the best procedure to do it in your camera manual.

I also posted earlier that the best way to check for dust on the sensor is just to take a few pictures of a clear blue sky, I still think this is a superior method than taking a picture of an evenly illuminated light surface, as recommended in many photographic websites and books, because the subtle small dust shadows are much harder to see. Sometimes the dust can be on the lens (or within the lens elements) but this produces a much more defuse shadow and frequently has give away lens flares associated with them. External dust on lens can be removed with the same gently blower methods but internal dust and dirt within the lens does require skilled specialist cleaning

Even when there is a horrible big shadow on you best ever digital photo, all is not lost. There are lots of tools around to “retouch” blotches and spot that are perfect to remove these blemishes. If you software doesn’t specifically mention dust look for a clone tool. These usually have two small circular zones, the first read whatever is with the circle and the pastes it over in the second circle So all you need to do is locate the first circle over and un-blemished bit of photo close to the dust particle that has the same colour, tone & texture and then position the second circle over the dust spot, click the mouse and the blemish is gone The catch is they are usually often very manual tasks and take some time to do well. So its much better to keep your sensor clean.

A dirty little secret

My new Pentax K100D isn’t even a week old, and horror, there is a black dot in the middle of the picture, there it is again in exactly the same place on the next frame, there again, and again…. My first thought was a dead pixel, nothing in the troubleshooting about that, in fact dots on pictures aren’t mentioned anywhere in the troubleshooting section or the index…. What it did find, after a lot of looking, was instructions to clean the CCD, and yes that was the problem. Something like dust on my CCD, that goes all the way back to my first photos I just didn’t notice them at the time. Yes tem, there were at least three. So the dust was in the camera when I purchased it (or as I screwed on the first lens)

Cleaning the Pentax wasn’t hard but it must be done with care, follow the instruction in the manual exactly. There is a menu item to lift the mirror and you can use a blower (not a brush blower) to gently blast air over the CCD. There are numerous warnings, to many to cover here. SO READ THE MANUAL! However I had to do it four times, which brings me to the real purpose of this blog post.

How do you know that your CCD requires cleaning?

It is easy to test for a dirty CCD. Aim you camera at the sky on a nice clear day, away from the sun, so the sky is evenly exposed. Take a few exposures moving the cameras around. A few clouds, a bit of a tree or horizon can help you make sure you do this. Then upload the photo to your computer and have a look at a large magnification, in software that lets to scroll from one image to the next. If to see a shadowy spot and it is the same position within the photo frame its very likely to be dust on the CCD


WARNING: looking around on the net with the key words like digital, slr, cleaning, ccd, cmos it would appear that the web is awash with complaints and horror stories. Also some of the articles may not be all that well informed. If you can not find instructions in your camera manual be careful about trying to clean its CCD. In fact don’t, take it back to the dealer, or a reputable camera shop. Nikon digital SLR owners must pay particular attention to Nikon’s disclaimers about this. If you own a Nikon I suggest you read the article by thom about cleaning your camera.