Camera care is important. Camera lenses are optical and engineering marvels. Camera lenses must be treated with care and respect when used, stored carefully and regularly maintained and cleaned. Take good care of your camera lenses, and they will take good care of you for years. There is equipment that you can get to clean and protect your lenses. There are also some simple techniques that I will tell you that will help you look after your lenses and get many years of pleasurable use out of them.
Hi, and a very warm welcome to Episode 191 of the Photography Explained podcast. I’m your host, Rick, and in each episode, I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 27 minutes (ish) without the irrelevant details. I’m a professionally qualified photographer based in England with a lifetime of photographic experience, which I share with you in my podcast.
You can listen to the episode here
Or keep on reading – up to you. Or do both!
That was the answery bit – here is the talky bit.
What needs protecting on a lens?
The exposed front lens element. And the exposed rear element. The outer casing. All the moving parts – all lenses have a focus ring. All lenses have an aperture with moving parts. Zoom lenses have moving parts within them. So, all of a lens, but particularly the precious front and rear lens elements and the moving parts.
Lens caps – a lens protection essential
Lenses have a front and rear lens element. This is glass that is exposed. I only take the front lens element off when taking a photo. I have never left a front or rear lens element exposed unless I am taking a photo or changing or cleaning a lens. Never.
You also get a body cap for when you haven’t got any lenses on your camera body, which stops bad stuff from getting into the camera sensor chamber.
How should I store my lenses?
Lenses should be stored in a cool, dry, secure environment. And with both lens caps on. I suggest the boot/ trunk of your car is not that place. More on that later.
My lenses are in camera bags in a cupboard in my home office. Simple and sorted. A camera bag is a perfect place to store your gear.
I used to store lenses in their original packaging, with the silica gel bags that came with them. That was when I had a lot of lenses. These days, I have three lenses for my Canon system and three for my Olympus system. So, each system lives in its own bag.
I will state the obvious here – store your lenses somewhere where they are not exposed to excess moisture, such as a kitchen, bathroom, swimming pool or spa. I know. If you have a swimming pool, or indeed a spa, let me know how you managed that, please!!
And store your lenses where there is no stuff on them or where they might get knocked or roll off onto the floor. Like I say, obvious, but it would be remiss of me not to say.
You should store them standing up on the mount bit, not on their side, not with the front lens element facing down.
You can buy lens pouches or cases, but I ended up storing my lenses in camera bags. It works fine for me. And I use the silica gel bags – so simple, effective, and valuable.
Can I store my camera with a lens on it?
I am not aware of any reason why you cannot store a camera with a lens on. Lens mounts on the lens and camera body are pretty durable. I have done this for years and have never had a problem.
For long-term storage? Common sense says take the lens off and fit caps on the camera lens mount and the rear lens element.
And use those silica gel bags. I always them in my camera bags to absorb any excess moisture.
What about when I put my camera body in my bag?
I always put my camera in my bag with my 17-40mm lens. I don’t change lenses often, so this is fine with me. You must consider how many lenses you use and what kind of bag you have. If you can configure your bag to put your camera in with any lens on, that’s fine. If you cannot, you need to consider whether you are better off putting your camera in your bag without a lens. If you are happy changing lenses, that is up to you, but every time you change a lens, there is a risk of getting dust into the camera sensor chamber, which is bad.
A quick word on camera bags and lenses
If you have spent a lot of money on a camera and lens/ lenses, it makes sense to protect your investment by buying a suitable camera bag. I will cover camera bags in a future episode. There are so many variables to camera bags that I am not going to attempt to cover them here other than say this:
Get a good camera bag that adequately protects your lenses, helps you use your gear how you want to, and, of course, gets you to where you are taking photos. I use a backpack because if I am photographing a construction site, I might have to climb ladders and need my hands free.
Gear that can help you look after your lenses – or not
Lens caps.
Front and rear lens caps should come with every lens when you buy them. And you should always use these – apart from when you are taking a photo. And have a spare front and rear lens cap and a body cap – they are not expensive.
Lens hoods
My number one piece of lens protecting kit. I always use the lens hood to protect that ever so precious front lens element. This is the lens hood that comes with each lens as they are all different, being focal length specific.
Lens cases or lens pouches
You can buy lens cases and lens pouches. I have used these in the past, but now I use my camera bag – entirely up to you.
Protector filters
Now, this is one of those things where I will tell you what I do but not tell you to do what I do. You can buy filters that fit in the filter thread that protect the front lens element. Back in the day, we used to have a thing called a UV filter, but these days, you can get protector filters. These are made of clear glass, meaning they do not affect image capture other than an inevitable, if very small, in some cases impossible to see, reduction in image capture quality. Buy a cheap filter and you will probably get a noticeable worsening of image quality.
After all, you are introducing an additional piece of glass, not one designed specifically for that lens.
But buy one of these and you are protecting the front lens element, which has to be a good idea.
I do not use protector filters any more. I have been doing this for a while and know what I am doing. I am super careful with my lenses. But I recommend that you use a protective filter, but do this one thing – take a photo without the filter, and the very some photo with the filter, and see if you can tell the difference.
Lens changing holders
There are gadgets that hold a lens so you in effect swap over lenses in the holder thing. I bought one of these and used it once, put it in my bag, forgot about it and sold it several years later. Have a look if you think one of these things will help you – I guess anything that reduces the chance of dropping a lens has to be a good thing right?
Rain sleeves
Rain sleeves are plastic sleeves that fit over the lens and protect the lens from rain. these work a treat, especially when combined with the lens hood. I have these and use them when I need to. I am in England – it can rain here any time…. It is raining as I write this….
Lens protectors
You can buy lens protectors that provide a protective covering to the body of a lens. You can get them in all sorts of colours, and also in camouflage patterns. I don’t need these but you might so check them out.
I am not a big gear fan, but anything that helps you protect your lens is well worth considering. Just make sure that the gadget in question doesn’t make things harder for you.
Lens coatings
Exposed lens elements have coatings on them to reduce lens flare (which you can get with direct sunlight), and to protect them from the elements. Don’k ask me how they actually work. The more expensive the lens, the better the lens coating. And the more recent the lens the better the lens coating probably. Make sure any cleaning stuff is the type that can be safely used on lens elements and does not damage the lens coating.
How to safely use lenses
Carefully is how to safely use lenses. Keep the lens cap on until you are ready to take aphoto. Use a lenshood. Use a protector filter if you have any doubts at all.
Do not bang the lens, drop it, anything like that.
It is just common sense really – a lens is a highly precision engineered optical device with glass and moving parts, so it should be used carefully and with respect.
How to correctly change lenses
This is how you change a lens.
Find a dust free, dry environment. Hollding the camera body down, remove the lens from the mount and put the other lens in the mount. Holding the camera body down, as in sensor facing the floor, minimises the chances of any dust falling from the bit where thelens meets the camera body into the sensor chamber.
Once done replace the rear lens cap on the other lens. I do this on the desk in my office.
How to clean a lens.
Clean lenses are happy lenses. I use a lens cleaning solution and disposable cloths. I also have a hurricane blower. This is an air blower. Squeeze it, and a puff of air comes out. That is all I have. That is my lens cleaning kit.
I go to my dry, dust free environment. I remove any loose dust from the body using the hurricane blower and a clean microfibre cloth. Then I remove the front lens cap, blow away any dust from the lens and the lens cap, clean the front element with the cleaning solution and cloths, using a couple of drops and cleaning very gently in a circular motion, then using the edge of the cloth to get right in where the lens element meets the lens body and then put the lens cap back on. I do the same with the rear lens element. And then I clean the rest of the lens again with the clean microfiber cloth. And then, the microfibre cloths are washed and dried, ready for their next use. The lens wipes are binned.
Thats all I do. Simple. And my lenses never get very dirty as I look after them.
If I have been on a particularly dusty construction site I will blow away any debris from the body first, wipe the body down with a very slightly damp micro fibre cloth, and then clean thelens elements as above.
That is as bad as it gets for me, and is the limit of my lens cleaning antics.
Oh yes, I also blow any dust away from the moving parts, and carefully rotate the zoom ring and focus ring, listening for any bad sounds that tell me there is something bad in there.
Things to avoid
- Rain
- Humid environments
- Water
- Salt water
- Dropping lenses
- Other bad stuff
Weather sealed lenses
You can get weather sealed lenses. Now what this means varies, so check what this actually is for any lens that you are considering or have. Be sure what the weather sealing of a lens actually is.
My camera gear disaster
Each episode I want to share something with you that I have done. It could be awesome, dreadful, or somewhere in between. What I am going to tell you this week falls in the dreadful category.
I used to keep my camera gear in three bags in the boot of my car. Don’t do this. This is a stupid thing to do. Now a car is hardly secure is it? So not a smart move. And I did not use my camera for a number of weeks over particularly wet winter. This was many years ago now. Many years ago.
I needed my camera bag so I went to get it to find it absolutely saturated. And I mean saturated. All my gear was soaked, and the padding of the bags was saturated. An utter disaster.
What I had to do was empty all my bags and place all my gear on a table in a dryish room. I wiped the moisture off and let things slowly dry. I took the lens caps off, opened up battery chambers and memory card chambers, basically opened everything up and left it all to dry for a week. The bags had to be dried in an airing cupboard (that dates this story). In the end, everything was fine, though.
Do not do this.
Which reminds me
A quick word on condensation
You have to be careful with condensation. If you take a very warm lens out and use it in a very cold environment you might get condensation on the lens when the warm glass meets the cold air. It goes away and can be avoided by not keeping your camera and lens somewhere super warm and then going out in the cold expecting to take photos immediately!
But don’t keep your gear in your car please!
You might get the same problem in areas which have a high moisture content. I once photographed the inside of a specialist building at a Zoo containing tropical plants and the like – it was heated to 30 degrees and very humid! Almost like taking photos in a steam room!
So be aware of condensation, best avoided but normally it worst itself out.
OK that is that lot.
What if I use a phone to take photos?
There are some lenses that you can attach to phone camera, which attach with clips or magnets or other devices. These need protection and looking after just like any other lens.
And that leads me to a thought – what about phone lenses? My iPhone 15 Pro has a sticky-out bit that protects the lenses from getting scratched when you put your phone down. Other than that I don’t do anything else to protect these lenses. and clean them every now and then, probably not often enugh.
What do I do?
I think I have covered that nicely. So I will move on OK? No I will not actually.
I meticulously look after my lenses. All professional photographers do. Lenses are precious work equipment.
The front lens cap is always on the lens on my lens. The front and rear lens caps are always on the other lenses not on my camera. I use the lens hood that came with each lens to protect that precious front lens element.
And I am super careful when I change lenses. I don’t want dust particles in my sensor chamber,
And I very rarely change lenses, which is good.
My lenses are always stored in proper camera bags. Always. The only time they are not in a camera bag is when I am using them or cleaning them.
As a result, in part of what I do, my lenses are as good now as they were when I bought them, apart from some very minor wear on the 17-40mm lens, that is.
And I have had all my Canon lenses for over 10 years now. Over 10 years! A long time for sure but no reason why you cant do the same. And I will only get a new lens when I break one, or I find a lens that helps me doing something I can’t do with what I have.
Some thoughts from the last episode
I enjoyed the last episode. And I am glad that I decided to make this a separate episode.
Next episode
I don’t know ! Any ideas? Seriously at the time of writing this I do not know what the next episode is going to be about.
Then I remembered a title from a long time ago that I had been thinking of doing: Why Can’t You Use Flash In Museums And Art Galleries? Yes, that will do nicely.
Ask me a question.
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OK – I am done.
This episode was brought to you by
which I consumed before I settled down in my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording emporium.
I’ve been Rick McEvoy. Thanks again very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast (it says here) and for giving me 27 minutes of your valuable time. After I have edited out the mistakes and other bad stuff, this episode will be about 30 minutes long.
Thanks for listening
Take care and stay safe.
Cheers from me, Rick
That was the podcast episode.
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Thank you
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Cheers from me Rick
