Digital camera sensors are important, sensitive, expensive bits of kit that need looking after. There are things that we can do to protect them from bad stuff, but if bad stuff gets to them, there are things that we can do to remove that stuff. In this episode, I tell you how to prevent bad stuff from getting to your camera’s sensor, which is our first job, and what to do when you get bad stuff on your camera sensor.
But for me, if I need to clean a camera sensor, I have failed with the prevention bit; I need to do a better job of looking after it.
A clean sensor is a happy sensor – remember that!!!
Yes, prevention is better than cure—or cleaning, dear listener.
That was the answery bit.
You can listen to the episode here
Or keep on reading – entirely up to you!
Hi, and a very warm welcome to Episode 193 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
INSERT BUZZ
Or keep on reading – entirely up to you of course.
Where is my camera sensor?
Your camera sensor is located in the camera body, and you can see it when you take the lens off a mirrorless camera – it is the flat, shiny, rectangular thing at the back. With a DSLR camera, you must take the lens off and raise the mirror and shutter to see the sensor. It is where the camera film used to be back in the day. Mirrorless cameras do not have mirrors; well, you’d hope not! But DSLR cameras do.
What bad stuff are you talking about?
Dust particles, particulates in the air, hairs, anything small you can find in the air looking for something flat and smooth to settle on. That kind of thing.
How does this bad stuff get on my camera sensor?
Well, if you take your lens off and leave your mirrorless camera facing up for any amount of time, dust and other stuff in the air will settle on it. It just will. So please don’t do that. No one wants a dirty sensor.
How do I know I have bad stuff on my sensor?
If you see little blurry splodges in your photos, you probably have something on your sensor. Little specks that should not be there. They are visible in the light parts of a photo, such as the sky. They are probably not visible in the darker parts of a photo.
Is this a problem?
Potentially, no – let’s remember this. If you are taking photos of things with no light bits in, you might have stuff on your sensor and never know it. But this bad stuff might adversely impact every photo without you knowing it – if the stuff has always been there, how will you know? Either way, it is a good idea to get rid of it.
How do you find out if you have stuff on your sensor?
You can buy something called a sensor loupe, which sits on the camera mount and allows you to see the dust on your sensor. Or you can take a photo of a white wall and look at that on your editing device of choice. And this, of course, costs nothing. Select a small aperture (large number), set the focus to manual (the one time that I do this), turn the focus ring to the closest setting (so the wall is out of focus), select AV Mode, a low ISO and take a photograph of a white wall, or a light blue sky.
Look at the test image in your editing software of choice. I use Lightroom. You can zoom in on the photo; if there is any dust or anything else on your sensor, it will actually show itself.
You might see tiny hairs; they get everywhere, even when you have as little hair as me! Dust spots are little black specks. These can be easily removed. If there is anything more sinister, such as smudges, these need more work.
In Lightroom, there is a tool you can use to check for dust spots, but remember that you might not see them in the dark parts of a photo, so doing the test I just told you about is invaluable.
The tool is in the remove tool; just select Visualise Spots, and the image is inverted – white becomes black and black becomes white. And all those nasties appear and can be removed in Lightroom from that photo.
Remove these nasties, that could be that – you might be done here. And you can copy and paste these removals into another photo.
And that could be you done!
If you have a few small dust spots that can be quickly dealt with when processing your images, that might be all you need to do. So, if that is you, dear listener, you can sit back and relax for the next bit.
In-camera sensor cleaning
My Canon 6D has a sensor cleaning feature. It is called the Self Cleaning Sensor Unit. If your camera has this, this should be the first that you do. And it should clean most of the dust spots off the sensor. It shakes the dust off the camera sensor would you believe, and is a very cool feature.
What if I need to remove the bad stuff from my sensor?
If you have established that there are dust sensors or hairs on your sensor, I recommend that you remove them. This is a simple procedure. All you need is an air blower. There are all sorts of different ones, but the one I use is called a hurricane blower. It cost me about a tenner many years ago and lives in its own zip-up case, keeping it nice and clean. It is important to keep the air blower clean and dust-free.
How to remove dust from your sensor
Take the lens off, turn the camera so the sensor is facing down, and blow a few puffs of air into the sensor chamber. Put the lens back on, take another photo, and see if the dust spots have gone away. If they have job done. If they have not, do this all over again. Hopefully, with a couple of goes at this, you are good to go.
And be sensible where you do this. A clean tabletop should be fine. I use my desk, which I clean with a standard wet household cleaning product. I let it dry, and I am good to go. And this really is all that I do.
What if this doesn’t work?
If this doesn’t work, you need to get your sensor cleaned. And that is where I stop. In the last episode, I said I would get a sensor cleaning kit and do this myself, but I have not. And I am sorry, David, in Alabama, I am not going to answer this bit of the question: “How do you clean a camera sensor?” And there are several reasons why.
If my sensor needs cleaning, I will take it to a camera shop that does this and pay for it to be done correctly. This is every once in a number of years, so it is okay for me. I used to get my sensors cleaned at the Photography Show back in the day. You could get this done for free, but I’m not sure if this still happens.
There are many different sensor cleaning kits, products, and devices out there, and when I looked into them, I could not narrow down to one specific way of cleaning my sensor.
And it would be wrong of me to tell you how to clean your camera sensor when I don’t do this myself.
So this is as far as I go.
How to avoid getting bad stuff on your sensor.
This I can talk about. Not getting stuff on your sensor has to be the way to go. Sensor dust is bad dust.
And never changing your lens is not an option; of course, it isn’t. But every time you change a lens, you risk getting dust on the sensor. So do these things to reduce the chance of that happening.
Be careful where you change your lenses. I am not saying that you can only do this in a dust-free environment. Whilst that is ideal, this is not real life. Whether you are changing lenses in your home, work, car, in a field, on a beach, or on a major construction site, there are a few things that you should always do.
First off, have the front and rear lens caps on all your lenses. When you are at home, clean the rear lens mount and the lens mount on the body using a slightly damp cloth and the air blower.
Oh yes, and turn your camera off when you are changing lenses. Less electrical stuff is going on, which might attract dust.
Clean the rear lens element as well as the front lens element. Keep the camera lens squeaky, clean, and dust-free, as this is one of the most obvious ways of getting dust on your sensor.
Have a place you can put your camera and lens, even if that is nothing more than a clean towel on the ground. Now, I always have a lens on my camera, so all I do is change lenses.
Hold the camera with the sensor facing down, take the rear lens cap off the lens you’re putting on, remove the lens and put the other lens on. Have the camera facing the ground so any dust won’t fall on the sensor – have it facing up, and this might happen.
Simple but effective.
And keep your lenses somewhere safe and dry. And your camera come to that. Keep your camera body and lenses clean, and you are already reducing the chances of getting bad stuff on your camera sensor.
I keep my cameras and lenses in bags stored in a cupboard. I occasionally clean the bags to get rid of any dust.
And that is that.
The talky bit
This episode was meant to be “How do you clean a camera sensor?” which was the question asked by listener Blake from Alabama. Hi Blake, I hope you are well. But cleaning a camera sensor for me is a last resort. If my sensor needs cleaning, I have failed to look after my camera correctly. Yes, look after your sensor, protect it, and cherish it like your favourite child, pet or thing. If you never need to clean your sensor, well done.
What if I use a phone to take photos?
Then you won’t have this problem as the sensor is behind the lens or lenses. Nice and simple.
What do I do?
What I tell you in this episode is what I do.I take great care of my camera sensor. But I hate the prospect of cleaning it. And I don’t mind admitting this to you. The reason is that I cleaned a sensor once, and it was worse after cleaning than it was before. I had to get someone else to sort this out. And I said never again. That was many years ago, and it might be time for me to get over myself, but this is why I am so reluctant. More on that in a bit.
And I rarely change lenses, which is a great way to protect your camera sensor from bad stuff. Lens changes increase the chance of getting dust on your sensor.
I check every photo I edit for dust spots in Lightroom and can quickly remove them, so this is not really an issue for me anyway.
My gear is a hurricane blower, also known as a rocket blower and a clean microfibre towel, which lives in my camera bag.
When I need to change lenses on a construction site, which does happen, I will find the least dusty place possible and probably change the lens inside my camera bag. If I do this, I will give the inside of the bag a good old clean down when I get home. See, I can’t avoid working in dusty environments with my work, so I have to be on top of this stuff.
I also clean the rear lens mount, the lens mount on the camera body, and the caps that go on both – the body and rear lens caps. I never leave the camera sensor or the rear lens element exposed – they are always covered.
Check out the podcast website for images of what is on my camera sensor and how I have removed that bad stuff – this is really all that I do.
I only get the sensor cleaned when I have to; I have not done this for years.
I am careful, and my cleaning regime is cheap and simple but very effective. Being careful helps me reduce dust and other bad stuff getting to my camera sensor. And the occasional test shot to check my sensor is nice and clean, which helps, too.
And that is what I do. Which is not much, is it?
The good, the bad and what I did once.
I bought a lens cleaning kit. I didn’t read the instructions properly; I didn’t clean the sensor properly, and I just rushed through it cockily, thinking I knew what I was doing. My cleaning process was erm, clumsy, lacklustre, and unsuitable for the image sensor. It did not end well. There were smears on the sensor that were not there before I started cleaning. My use of the sensor swab made the sensor more dirty! And the dust spots and other stuff had merely been moved elsewhere on the sensor.
I had to pay someone to sort this out.
I also spent a small fortune on cleaning kit and other stuff that I didn’t know how to use. Compressed air, spinning brushes, swabs and liquids, all sorts of stuff. So I am scarred by this bad experience.
Please do not do what I did. If you are going to do this, be sure about what you are doing, and follow the supplier’s instructions – they will tell you the best practice for the products you have bought. Another reason why I am not telling you how to clean a camera sensor is that it depends on what you are using.
This was some years ago, and I have learned from that mistake.
Some thoughts from the last episode
I loved the last episode, which was well-received and gave me some great new material to share. I never thought I would be talking about the Mona Lisa on my podcast, ha! And there was a seriously good point there that I want to return to. Well, two.
The first one – one thing I hate is everyone with their phones over their heads, filming or photographing the same thing. It is ruining that thing for everyone else.
And the other thing – why is everyone photographing and recording the same thing? Why are people taking photos of paintings in museums, galleries and other places?
What is everyone doing with the same photo? There must be a better way, surely. Other than just not doing it and being present in what you are doing, are you actually enjoying it?
I don’t know, people these days, eh?
Next episode
Not sure. I need to come up with something, so let’s leave the next episode as a surprise. Well, it will be a surprise for you and me! If you have any ideas, please let me know.
Ask me a question.
If you have a question you would like me to answer, email me at sales@rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk or visit the podcast website, photographyexplainedpodcast.com/start. Or text me from the podcast feed.
If you want to say hi, please do – I love hearing from my listeners.
OK – I am done.
This episode was brought to you by a coffee which I consumed before I settled down in my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording emporium. This is a late morning recording, which will be followed by a cheese and pickle sandwich, no crisps.
I’ve been Rick McEvoy. Thanks again 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 27 minutes long.
Thanks for listening
Take care and stay safe.
Cheers from me, Rick
That was the podcast episode.
Want to know more?
Head over to the Start page on the Photography Explained Podcast website to find out more.
And here is the list of episodes published to date – you can listen to any episode straight from this page which is nice.
Let me know if there is a photography thing that you want me to explain and I will add it to my list. Just head over to the This is my list of things to explain page of this website to see what is on there already.
Let me send you stuff
I send out a weekly email to my subscribers. It is my take on one photography thing, plus what I have been writing and talking about. Just fill in the box and you can get my weekly photographic musings straight to your inbox. Which is nice.
And finally a little bit about me
Finally, yes this paragraph is all about me – check out my Rick McEvoy Photography website to find out more about me and my architectural, construction, real estate and travel photography work. I also write about general photography stuff, all in plain English without the irrelevant detail.
Thank you
Thanks for listening to my podcast (if you did) and reading this blog post (which I assume you have done as you are reading this).
Cheers from me Rick
