*&^%£$% Sensor Cleaning.

I’m off for a week in Hampshire with Mrs M. It’s a part of the country that I haven’t been to in many a long year – I was still running around and playing in shorts and wellies the last time I went. Anyway, I decided I would just take minimal gear (after-all it is a break for Mrs M as well so subjecting her to endless hours of photography wouldn’t be fair)in the shape of the D7100 the FX 24-85 lens, a couple of filters and the Lowepro Shoulder-sling bag.
But, a couple of days ago I had noticed that there were a couple of marks on the last few images taken with the D7100 so I thought I’d better clean it. I locked the mirror up and blasted the sensor with the rocket-blower but the debris remained. So out came the Visible Dust orange swabs and the VDust + liquid and I cleaned the sensor. It took two swabs and I had a sparkly sensor again. ‘Great’, I thought, ‘The horrors of numerous swabs to clean the oil spill known as the D600 sensor are a thing of the past’.


I then checked the D800. It looked like there was a smear of oil on the edge of the sensor. Bugger! Once again the blower didn’t remove it. Probably oil then. I used Smear Away liquid this time and 10 (yes 10) swabs later I was still getting oil smears moving across the sensor face. I was getting angrier and angrier as each swab was used and failed to remove the marks. Half an hour later, I was down to my last swab. I decided to use Vdust+ this time as it is supposed to be for water stains and light oil. This was the last ditch attempt to remove the crud. I had no more swabs. The D800 would have to stay oil smeared until I returned from my holiday. I applied the VDust+ to the swab. Inserted it into the neck of the camera and swept it across the sensor face, reversed the swab and came back the other way. I turned the camera off to reset the mirror and attached a lens. I went outside and set the aperture to f/22 and shot into the sky. I pressed the blue triangle and magnified the image. I then went around the picture…it was clean. No marks.


Now I have to buy some more Vdust swabs at £30 for 12.


Expensive lark this photo stuff.

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