Showing posts with label cleaning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cleaning. Show all posts

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Scrub That Sucker Clean, Baby!


Those of you old enough to remember the 1970's may remember where - that - line comes from.

The real reason we are featuring lens cleaning products is that we have so many of them and you all need them. This town is full of dirty glass, as any day at our or repair counter will attest. The wise people have dirty filters on clean lenses and the foolish people have dirty lenses, but that is another tale - today it is the question of cleaning glass.

Firstly - do not get it dirty. Use a lens caps and keep your fingers out of the lens hood -and if you are subject to environments that are dusty, brush or blow it off the glass with a blower or a soft brush. If the environment includes oil, fingerprints, dog nose prints, or fragments of egg-salad sandwich with mayonnaise, you will have to go on to the active cleaning.

Look at the head and tail images. These products are all designed to get after those heavier contaminants. You'll see three packets of dry lens tissue - soft one-use paper that can be safely wiped over glass. I would recommend that you either use a commercial eyeglass spray cleaner to wet one of these, followed by a dry wipe with a second tissue, or resort to the good old el-cheapo alternative of one drop of washing-up liquid in a glass of distilled water. Do not use drinking alcohol to wipe over the glass surface, particularly do not use Midori or Advocaat.

A packet of these dry tissues are a good partner to a couple of the Hama Feuchtreinigungstuchen. Say that late at night and see what materialises in the dark....

If you are caught out in the field, away from the washing-up liquid, he best cleaners are the Hoodman Lens Cleanse packets. They are a wet then dry combo and can remove anything organic. Highly recommended by Ernest, the fussy technician.

Last on the list are the microfibre cloths - these are available from several manufacturers, including one with our shop logo emblazoned on it. Use them to keep the small bits of oily smear at bay - they can also be washed out when they become fouled.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

A Guide For The Perplexed Pixel






I noted recently that my little 3-D stereoscope - I got it as a child - has been repeating itself over and over. I think it is a Déja-View Master... Those of you old enough to appreciate this will also like the next bit.

We get all sorts of service calls here for repairs and maintenance to digital cameras. One of the most frequent worries is material contaminating the sensor and showing up in the image.  Here is a little guide to understanding what you see and what to do about it.


1. Vague grey blobs on an even grey ground are dust particles on the sensor - they shade the surface and thus it is darker, with a fuzzy outline. You may see a crescent-shaped item - likely a hair on the sensor.

You can clean the sensor yourself with a number of commercial brushes and swabs, but in the hands of the ham-fisted, this can carry a real danger of scratching the delicate surface. Ruin the sensor and you might as well buy a new camera...

Better plan is to let the technicians here at CE clean it for you. They do not ruin sensors, and the cost and time required for this service is not excessive. $44 for a small mirrorless camera, $55 for an APSC sensor, and $77 for a full frame DSLR.


2. The well defined grey blob with eight legs is a spider in a bathtub. Don't scoff - in 40 years in the trade I have seen a number of film and digital cameras infested with mites and crawlies of various types. Insecticide fumes and a mechanical cleaning get rid of them. If you discover a Huntsman in your mirror box, don't take off the lens, whatever you do...


3. We were asked how to get rid of this irregular-shaped mark on the image. If it is just one-off I would suggest Photoshopping it out with the clone tool. If you get a have a lot of these recurring, get yourself a Mossberg .410 and a box of No.7 shells.


4. This is harder to get rid of. And you get yourself in real trouble with the DCA if you try. Best idea is to turn away from it and photograph another bit of the sky. These marks rarely intrude themselves into interior shots or family portraits...