Checking and Cleaning a Sensor
While many new cameras have soft clean mechanisms, it is still necessary to check and clean your sensor manually to remove stubborn specs of dust. There is no way around this. Sensors need to be cleaned on a regular basis and there are a number of ways to do so.
I know many of you may feel anxious about cleaning your sensor. I want you to know every single if it will be okay, and it will just take a minute or two of your time.
If you have an important shoot, this will save you hours in that if sensors does appears, you would have to go through each image individually and clean it up in Photoshop. It is worth learning to do if you have your own camera. Take a picture of the sky at a very small aperture, say F22 or F29. Open the image in Photoshop and using the levels tool, adjust the slider of your histogram. It tells sensor dust is readily visible in your images, this will tell you how dirty your sensor is.
Okay, I thought I take a minute to show how I cleaned my own cameras, I have a 20D out here and I use a product called Dust-Aid. Now this is not a recommendation or an endorsement, I am just basically saying this is what I use and it works pretty good for me. What you are going to do is you are going to come back to the back of the camera and you are going to select sensor clean, select that and the sensor is now exposed. As soon as I take this off, this is going to be exposed, open this, so there is your sensor and you are going to use your dust aid wand, this is one of these spongy adhesive squares on there and it is really.
You are just going to put it inside and push it on your sensors lightly, so it is sticking there. I usually pull it off to the side like this, towards the middle, each time. And you do this in four directions.
[Demo]
That is basically it. You are going to come back here, turn the camera off. Now, shut the camera and that is it. And as you can see, the results are impressive. Whichever cleaning tool you decide to use, be sure to carefully read the manufacturers instructions.
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