Sensor Cleaning--how often?

[dwdallam]

How often do you clean your sensors? (Open ended question; just note whatever parameters you are cleaning under.)

[Tim Gray]

When I get tired of cloning out the dust - usually at about the 4 spot stage - works out to about once every 1,000 shots (Canon 1DMKII).  Except when I'm travelling and not editing my shots daily, then I clean every night.

[dwdallam]

When I get tired of cloning out the dust - usually at about the 4 spot stage - works out to about once every 1,000 shots (Canon 1DMKII).  Except when I'm travelling and not editing my shots daily, then I clean every night.

What are you using to clean with, and what is your method?

[Graham Welland]

What are you using to clean with, and what is your method?

I use a Giotto Rocket blower whenever I need a quick clean up. These work reasonably well so long as you don't have too much objectionable crud on the sensor glass. If it's time for a proper clean then ....

Some consider Visible Dust products 'snake oil' but they work magnificently for me. You might also consider looking at the Eclipse Sensor Swabs/cleaning fluid although I no longer use these as you can't travel by air with the fluid and basically the Visible Dust brushes work better without any liquids.

How often? Whenever the dust on the sensor bugs me enough to clean up. You'll know when you review the images and have to fix up blobs with the clone tool.

[francois]

I use a bulb blower and VD brushes. With stickier specks, I use Eclipse fluid or VD sensor clean.
Frequency of cleaning is very variable, depending on the type of environment and weather. Sometimes it's once a day and sometimes it's once a month. When my camera was new it seemed to attract way more dust than now.

HTH,
Francois

[Tim Gray]

Visible Dust brush.  On the rare occasion when the dust isn't really dust, but gunk, then I use the Copperhill method.

[dwdallam]

Visible Dust brush.  On the rare occasion when the dust isn't really dust, but gunk, then I use the Copperhill method.

I've read some negatives on the brush approach, but I've read nothing but good about using the SS or the Sensor Wand/Pecpad method with the Exclipse solution. I've read at least one reviewer saying not to use a blower, even the rocket type, because it can push dust further into the camera.

What I am leaning to, given my researcha nd your comments, is this method:

1) Rocket Blower
2) Sensor wand
3) Pecpad/solution

Any problem here? Should I use the Rocket Blower alone, then take a picture using the small arpeture methode and levels in photoshop to see if that cleared the problem, or should I just rocket blow it and swab it all in one go?

Last, since teh 20D isn't weather sealed, how much dust will be getting into the sensor area w/o changing lenses? This is just so I know about how much dust gets into the sensor area even when one isn't changing lenses (e.g., You go to take a month trip and never change the lens).

[gewitterkind]

never. you gotta love olympus for that... : )

[dwdallam]

never. you gotta love olympus for that... : )

Yeah, I read about there sonic in camera auto cleaner. Nice. Still, if you get some "welded" dust (dust + moisture), I read where it won't take that off.