cleaning image sensor - DSLR

At first, I was terrified at the thought of messing around with the sensors in our DSLRs (and I am very mechanically adept), but the increasing amount of spots appearing in our skies and the astronomical expense and aggravation of having a shop do the job caused me to do tons of research and tackle the job myself.

No. 1 : Have a fully charged battery in the camera.

No. 2 : Set camera for "manual cleaning" = mirror up and out of the way.

I bought a box full of goodies to accomplish the task, including a lighted magnifying loupe made especially for the task, a special brush, rocket-blower, lens-pen, and some little adhesive dirt-picker-upper gizmos.

The main thing to watch out for is that there are some very close parts in there that are lubricated with a black grease; you definitely don't want to touch that grease with any of your cleaning tools and it would sure be easy to do so.

When I have more time, I will try to provide links to the products I used.

One good rule to follow is do the least invasive steps in sequence, checking between each step to see if you need to get more serious; although in your case it looks like you are going to have to go deeper, often just moving the mirror out of the way and rocket-blasting will do the trick.

One caution about any of the rubber-bulb blaster thingies: the inside of these things may still contain mold release powder and it would be a wise move to give one several forceful blasts out into the elements before blowing your camera full of mold release powder.


I will also say this:  Dirt will find your sensor even if you never remove the lens and no matter how careful you are.

Thanks for reading.