Friday, April 24, 2015

I cleaned my camera!

If you've been following my blog for long, you know that I've mentioned more than once that my camera needed cleaning. Smudges were visible on photos that had a lot of plain empty space. Can you see the two spots in the sky on the photo below?


At one point in taking those pics, I'd changed the aperture to see if I could get a clearer shot. I did, all right... I got a clearer shot of the dust specs! (That "specs" is Blogger's spelling, not mine... please see comments below!) See?


Yep, those are very magnified tiny dust motes or fibers on the sensor inside my camera. Not a good thing for getting decent photos. I was hesitant to go inside my camera to clean it... just plain scared to do it, actually. But I searched YouTube for videos on how to clean a DSLR. There are plenty there, and I watched a number of them. Some of them tell you to actually get in there and touch that sensor with a special tool and cleaning fluid. I didn't have those particular tools, but luckily I was able to just blow off those specks with my air blower tool from my cleaning kit.

I won't point you to any particular DSLR cleaning video, because there are many helpful ones, except I do want to mention this short one, because it showed how to see if your sensor is really clean. I had to go through the blowing and testing a couple of times before I got a completely clean screen, but I did it! Here's my test result:


Squeaky clean, huh? :) The job really wasn't as scary as I thought it was gonna be, and I wouldn't hesitate to get in there and do it again if it were necessary, which I'm sure it will be eventually. Every time I switch a lens, there's the potential of getting dust in there. I feel like such a pro now - ha!

9 comments:

Grandma G said...


Well, now! This is VERY interesting! I just proofread through my post again, because sometimes I catch things that I don't see when I'm writing it. I could've sworn that I wrote "specks" in that second paragraph, rather than the "specs" that is there now, but I figured my fingers must've goofed, so I just now went back to edit and correct it. Guess what? It DOES say "specks" in my original!! What is this?! Another case of Blogger thinking it knows better than I do what I want to put in my post?! Grrrrr!!!

Grandma G said...

And besides that, Blogger is WRONG! The correct word is "specks"!!

Jessica Jones said...

I've never cleaned my camera, but I expecs I'll have to someday. Now I know it's doable. Thanks!

Jessica Jones said...

Har har. Just testing to see if Blogger would correct that.

Grandma G said...

Haha!

Geneviève said...

Glad to see it went well! It is now ready for more specks-tacular pictures ;P

Grandma G said...

"Specks-tacular" - haha again! :)

annie dee said...

Good for you - giving the lens cleaning a whirl AND that it worked out so well! Makes you feel good, huh? Kudos!

Grandma G said...

Thanks. I wasn't just the lens, though... it was the sensor, deep in the darkest bowels of the camera, even beyond the mirror!! Yes, I do feel good about having ventured in there and successfully routing out the dust motes! :)