What do you use to clean your lens? Lens Cleaning Tissue?

[Kevin Wayne Jones]

Looking into a system of regular lens cleaning for my EX-1.
Just curious what others are doing as far as regular lens cleaning maintenance.
Particularly while out on a shoot for quick and easy cleaning.

Disposable tissues look promising. Can they be used alone or do they require some sort of cleaning solution?

Was considering something like this:
Tiffen | Lens Cleaning Tissue - 50 Sheets | EK1546027T | B&H

Thanks.

kj

[Nick Wilson]

Lens cleaning fluid (some sort of alcohol, I think) and lens tissue to polish it off.

Jessops - Lens & Camera cleaning kit

That said, I am mainly cleaning a UV filter - the fluid and tissues does well at removing the smears left by my handkerchief etc in the field!

Nick

[Josh Bass]

kim wipes, canned air, pAncro cleaning fluid

[Alister Chapman]

Good quality Chamois Leather or a micro fibre lens cloth. Be very careful with tissue, it can scratch the coatings if you rub too hard and canned air is really good at blowing dust inside the lens assembly if not used with discretion. A camel hair brush or an old fashioned bulb type blower will work well with dust with less risk of blasting dirt and dust into the camera. For the camera body a soft paint brush works well to remove dust from all the nooks and crannies.

Whatever you use to clean a lens, make sure it is clean. Keep your lens cloth in a zip-lock bag if you can. It only takes one speck of grit, sand or dirt to scratch a lens.

[Gints Klimanis]

Lots of great advice in this thread.

I use a Giottos Rocket bulb (there are now THREE sizes, the smaller one doesn't have enough power) to blow off most particles. They're great and double as cushioning material in your bag. I did have a problem in 2005 with a newbie Los Angeles airport security agent that called in a bomb threat. She opened the bag, saw the rocket bulb, and her face went white as she stammered over the walkie-talkie. The security manager chuckled and let me go after some routine "So, how long have you been a photographer?" questions.

Compressed air is mentioned often, but wow, after trying it to clean my computer keyboard, I wouldn't want to freeze my lens and risk that white residue ruining the lens coatings. I used to use generic lens cleaning fluid or breath and either lens tissue or a micro-fiber cloth. The micro-fiber cloth was great until it lost moisture in the fibers after about two washes and become hard and scratchy.

Nikon recommends one drop of cleaning fluid and using the tissue as a kind of wick. Lens tissue is ok, but I needed 2-3 per clean.

There are Hakuba cleaner+brush combo pens with a circular felt tip on one end and a brush on the other. They are convenient for working off a stubborn water spot from an outdoor shoot. However, the felt pads wore down quickly on the edges of the circle and exposed the plastic base. Horrible. Also, if you rub these pens on a light surface, you'll see that the agent is graphite-colored.

Very recently, I switched to PecPads and Eclipse solution. You can't mail order the Eclipse solution due to some bizarre hazardous material shipping restrictions, so pick it up at your local pro photo store.
Cleaning Digital Sensors, Cleaning Digital Cameras - Photographic Solutions, Inc. - Digital & Photographic Cleaning Solutions

[Jason Bodnar]

I use the Zeiss Lens cleaning cloths... They are awsome and cheap!!

90 individual packets of pre-moistened, non-abrasive lens cloths
• High-tech ammonia-free formula cleans effectively without leaving streaks or residue
• Designed for single use


The local WallMart optical center carrys them... in a box of 50...but below is an online link for 90 for about a dollar more.


90 Zeiss Lens Cleaning Cloths | Mighty Vent

[William Urschel]

Kodak Lens Cleaning Paper! Have used it for decades with no problems and only the best results. Use it with the cautions expressed in the forgoing posts, and you can't go wrong.

[Josh Bass]

This is one of those questions you will get a thousand different answers to. I have been on sets with top end DPs and ACs (camera assistants), and am friends with the guys from the local Plus8/Panavision house, and I can tell you the advice I've gotten from them and what I've seen from observing these guys in action.

First off--they all say that any type of cloth that you reuse is a no-no. Granted the first time you use it, it's clean, but what about the second time? That's right, it's got all the crap you wiped off the first time, and now you're grinding it into your lens!

So you want some kind of disposable tissue. I was referred to Kim Wipes, and they seem to work pretty well. They're soft, not starchy and stiff, and they don't leave much behind after a wipe. A lot of tissues leave more crap than the take away, it seems.

The Kim wipes should be used in conjunction with the Pancro lens cleaner. This is a fairly pricey bottle of fluid (around $27/bottle---but how often will you really need a new bottle?) that I've seen these guys use to clean lenses on Varicams, F900s, etc., so I think it's safe for the kinds of cams most of us use. From what I'm told, you should only touch your lens when necessary, meaning that if it doesn't look like there's any spots on there that couldn't be blown off by an air blast (see below), then don't wipe the lens down.

As far as canned air, yes, propellant is a danger, but if you're careful it shouldn't be an issue. Certain brands of air seem to be much more prone to spraying than others. I think there are even special nozzles you can get that help with this. At any rate, I always spray from an angle, and in short bursts, as opposed to just holding the trigger down. Also, I give it a few squirts into the air when I first take it out on a given day. I've seen another technique that a DP showed me where you have the cam on a tripod, tilted up, and you hold the canned air above*it, can upright, and bend the straw into an upside-down U, directing the stream toward the upturned lens, and spray with a sustained stream. This apparently works for him, didn't work for me---I got propellant all over the lens, so I never tried his way again.

I tried all those lens pens, air brush bulb thingies, etc., when I first started, and they never seemed to do anything for me.

My 2 cents.

[Martin Catt]

For wet cleaning, I use plain old Windex (the blue stuff) and Kimwipes. I've seen Windex used to clean six-figure $$ optical surfaces at multiple jobs I've had in the past, and NEVER seen any damage or degradation to AR coatings or lenses. I can get Kimwipes from my present job, and have used them for years before that. Just the right amount of roughness combined with low-lint production. In a pinch, I've used facial tissues, but only when there wasn't anything else available. I'm always concerned about anything that has a fragrance built-in to the material.

For dry cleaning, I've got a couple Cartier-branded microfiber cleaning cloths from my stint with them as a watchmaker. They work well, and can be washed when they get dirty with no loss of cleaning properties. Plus, it's worth the look on other people's faces when I whip out the cloth with the large Cartier logo printed in the center and wipe a smudge away.

And for gun-and-run cleaning, I've got a couple of the lens cleaning pens (Tiffen, I think) in my gear bags. Great for knocking that random smear or dust from the lens quickly.

Martin

[Josh Bass]

Sorry, yes. I guess if you cleaned your cloth after each use, you could reuse.

[Tom Vaughan]

I would never use facial tissues, tissue paper, or paper towels... they are all made from wood fibers, and they aren't as soft as special purpose cleaning cloths or wipes.

I'm using lens cleaning tissues. I like the above advice, and will look into kimwipes.

[Josh Bass]

Few more tips, while we're at it:

I've always heard that you should spray the cloth/tissue with the fluid, NOT the glass (though I know a guy who does the opposite). You're supposed to "mist" it onto the cloth, instead of spraying it in a concentrated area of the cloth. However, I believe a compromise between misting and a concentrated spray works best, because if it's too misted, the tissue/cloth has no moisture, and hence no power to actually remove spots or anything. If it's too concentrated, it's super wet and leaves residue all over your glass.

Some guys say to wipe in circles from the center of the lens out toward the edge, others say to start at the edge and go inward. The theory is that if you wipe from center out, you can push dirt and stuff toward the edges where it could get inside the lens element, but if you start from the edge toward the center, you're pushing all the crap toward the center of your lens, and it has nowhere to go. So, who knows on this one?

You wipe once with the "wet" part of the tissue, then find a dry piece and wipe again to clear any residue off.

[Alister Chapman]

The golden rule that I have always been given by lens manufacturers is never use man made fibres or fibres made from wood pulp as they are almost always abrasive, unless it is a purpose made lens cloth or tissue from a reputable manufacturer. I wouldn't want windex within a mile of my lenses as well as being a very aggressive cleaner it also leaves an anti wetting deposit on the glass that is difficult to remove. Despite the fact that the core of my business is filming in severe and extreme weather conditions I almost never need to use any kind of liquid cleaner on my lenses. Rain is cleaned off with a chamois leather which is soft and absorbant and can be washed and reused. I have seen two lenses that have had to have full strip downs after the over enthusiastic use of canned air.

The best way to look after your optics is to prevent them getting dirty in the first place.

As has been said there will be many opinions on this topic and these are just mine :-)

[Bob Hart]

Buy an optical filter and screw it in the front and only remove it when internal reflections cause an issue which is more often than you might think.

Watch out for chemicals in overspray drifts from bug sprays and repellents being blasted about by tormented cast and crews outdoors. The optical coat on my cam looks like a colourblindness chart when viewed from the front, has become etched and it will not polish clean.

It got on there while my back was turned. I knew the stuff was being used but did not think to check and did not notice anything through the camera when rolling. Fortunately it does not show up on the image however I was very unhappy at the time I discovered it some time later after the damage was done.

[John Peterson]

Originally Posted by Bob Hart

Buy an optical filter and screw it in the front and only remove it when internal reflections cause an issue which is more often than you might think.

Ditto

John