Dust and Cleaning of the Imager on Canon 5D2

[Chris Barcellos]

So I am curious what others have for tips in terms of precautions with avoiding dust and such on the imager. This is my first camera that opens imager directly to the outside elements and this comes up because I went out to shoot some test footage with a 2x teleextender yesterday, and I ended up with dust or lint on the imager. Annoying, to say the least. Anyone ?

[Bruce G. Cleveland]

Chris I would recommend going to your local camera store and have them show you how to clean the sensor and they should have everything there you need to clean yourself. The most useful thing I bought was a plastic ring with lights on the inside of it. it is the size of the lens hole and gives you a really great view of your sensor and how much if any dirty you have.

Bruce Cleveland

[Ray Bell]

One of the first things you should purchase is the rocket blower and a plastic baggie...

Giottos | Rocket Air Blower - (Large) 7.5" | AA1900 | B&H

most dust particles are easy to remove with the blower... put the camera in clean mode (mirror out of the way) and just take the lens off, point the body of the camera down towards the floor and use the rocket blower to dislodge dust from the sensor.... only takes a couple of blasts..

The plastic baggie is for storage of the Rocket Blower, if it gets dusty then your just blowing
dust into the camera...

Here's a website about cleaning them....

Copper Hill Images - CCD/CMOS Cleaning Tutorial - Introduction

but its best to resist the wet clean method until its the only way to get the sensor clean...

To check the sensor for dirt, put your lens on the camera, put the iris at max closure and just point the camera at a well lit wall or the sky... and take a couple of pictures... now
look at them in Photoshop and you will see either a clean picture or one that shows dust spots... also to note, the 5DMKII does have a built in sensor cleaner that should give
use more milage between sensor cleanings...

P.S. Don't use the canned air as they will get moisture or oils in the body...

try to get into the habit when you change a lens to always point the body down so dust has a harder time falling into the body...and have the lens ready for exchange to limit
the time dust could enter during the lens change...

[Chris Barcellos]

Bruce and Ray:

Thank you for your responses.

Ray: Your links are quite informative..

[Andy Batt]

Hi Chris -

I've been using DSLRs professionally, and cleaning them, since about 2003. IMHO Visible Dust makes the best cleaning products around: VisibleDust - DSLR Camera Sensor Cleaning

Their site has a lot of good information as to what their products do, and why they do them well.

My 2¢:
- never use canned air inside the chamber - the propellant can do very bad things.
- never use a 'rocket' inside the chamber - unless it's one of the new filtered ones that Visible Dust offers - but even then, all you are doing is moving the dust around, not removing it.
- I also use a Kinetronics Speck Grabber as my first tool for big pieces of dust.

The most important thing: you will never get rid of all the dust. You will go crazy if you try. The fortunate corollary is at 5.6 and below, you probably will never see the dust.

cheers

-andy