Nobody likes to find repeated marks on their digital photos. You know, maybe the sky has some weird pattern of small cloud puffs that could have been made by a sky writer…but weren’t?
And there is a reason most manufacturers of DSLR, on all levels of their lines, have some sort of sensor cleaner built in.
You will have to clean it at some point.
Especially since you change lenses. We felt the pain a bit at A music festival as the changing was fast and furious in not the best conditions.
But let’s clear up some misconceptions: with all of the sensor cleaners out there, you are not really cleaning the sensor.
I know, right?
You are actually cleaning the glass in front of the sensor. Do you really think that manufacturers would let us get that close to the unvarnished brain of the whole camera. Thankfully not.
Ok, now that we’ve cleared that up and hopefully, alleviated any fears.
So with a lot of choices out there, we wanted to share a newcomer to the market, Sensor Klear Loupe by Lenspen, show you video on how it works, then let you know why we dig it:
Roll the video, please:


Now here are the main things we dig:

1. the window letting us see what the heck we are cleaning
2. the articulated cleaning pen
3. the small size. Fits in our kit bag.Note: the pen does not have it’s own case.
In addition, as the guy in the video says, most dirt can be blown off with a bulb blower. Yes, forget the compressed air cans. We know better now.

It’s not maintenance, but a good habit to get into.
Is it sexy? Will it make your image sing, look more colorful, sharper, select focus, get closer, tighten the grain, remove blemishes?
Nope.
But it’s a tool you will need. Because when you are editing your last assignment and that repeating blemish is killing your editing time, since you have to repair it all, you’ll wonder why you didn’t check it all out before you went to shoot.
Kinda like my mom would say ” Always leave the house with clean underwear on ”
Well, you check every other part of your gear. Might as well get in the habit of checking the sensor. No matter which manufacturer you go with.
Mom was right.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Photo News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.