Sensor cleaning is one of those mundane tasks that most of us have to undertake periodically. While I find the inbuilt sensor cleaning in current Canon models does a reasonable job of keeping the sensor clean, round the sensor edges (particularly the corners) seem to be a magnet for dust.
Over the years I seem to have tried most methods for sensor cleaning, from pecpads/eclipse to sensor brushes with varying degrees of success .
A while ago I purchased (from the EOS shop) 'Speckgrabber Pro' , a tool for removing sensor dust spots.
I finally got round to giving it a tryout, as I noticed the sensor on my 1Ds MKIII was starting to show numerous dust specs when shooting at f11-f22.
From the image below, the left hand side shows a corner crop of a 100% image at F40 (200 mm +1.4 TC) ISO 800, before any sensor cleaning.
The middle image (same settings) shows the sensor after 20 minutes of carefully using the Specgrabber tool.
And the right image shows the sensor after a further 15 minutes with the tool plus 5 run throughs of the camera's inbuilt sensor clean.
Larger image:- http://www.lesmclean.co.uk/1Ds_clean/1DSL3422.jpg
As you can see, the Specgrabber Tool does a pretty good job of cleaning the sensor, not perfect, but close. It does not appear to leave any 'smudge' marks, that some other methods are prone to do.
It is also re-usable, needing to clean the tip in cold water , allowing to dry before re-use.
On the downside, it's a labour intensive task, as the Specgrabber tip is so small, it takes some time to cover the sensor.
For me, it's been a good buy, reasonably cheap (£6.95), and basically does what it says on the tin.
Over the years I seem to have tried most methods for sensor cleaning, from pecpads/eclipse to sensor brushes with varying degrees of success .
A while ago I purchased (from the EOS shop) 'Speckgrabber Pro' , a tool for removing sensor dust spots.
I finally got round to giving it a tryout, as I noticed the sensor on my 1Ds MKIII was starting to show numerous dust specs when shooting at f11-f22.
From the image below, the left hand side shows a corner crop of a 100% image at F40 (200 mm +1.4 TC) ISO 800, before any sensor cleaning.
The middle image (same settings) shows the sensor after 20 minutes of carefully using the Specgrabber tool.
And the right image shows the sensor after a further 15 minutes with the tool plus 5 run throughs of the camera's inbuilt sensor clean.
Larger image:- http://www.lesmclean.co.uk/1Ds_clean/1DSL3422.jpg
As you can see, the Specgrabber Tool does a pretty good job of cleaning the sensor, not perfect, but close. It does not appear to leave any 'smudge' marks, that some other methods are prone to do.
It is also re-usable, needing to clean the tip in cold water , allowing to dry before re-use.
On the downside, it's a labour intensive task, as the Specgrabber tip is so small, it takes some time to cover the sensor.
For me, it's been a good buy, reasonably cheap (£6.95), and basically does what it says on the tin.
Comment