How to Clean Dust from your Digital Camera Sensor Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

hi I'm Tony Northrup and for chapter 5
of my book sending digital photography
I'd like to cover how to clean your
digital camera sensor I've had the
opportunity to review hundreds maybe
thousands of pictures from readers on
our private group on Facebook the
stunning digital photography readers
group and the most common problem I see
is sensor dust people don't necessarily
even notice it but it's gonna be really
obvious especially in areas of clear
blue sky or nicely blurred areas
particularly of a solid color your
camera gets dust on the sensor and it
appears in pictures now back in the film
days this wasn't a problem because every
time you press the shutter you've got a
brand new sensor a new piece of film
swapped in so every piece was always
absolutely clean but for those of us
who've switched to digital that sensor
stays there and it accumulates dust over
time particularly if you change lenses
there's no way to avoid it you're not
doing anything wrong you will get dust
now if you look at your camera's manual
it'll tell you how to clean it and then
they'll say send it off to a qualified
professional to clean it I get dust on
my sensor about every week in fact I
usually clean it before every single
shoot and there's no way I could afford
to send it off to a professional cleaner
every single time I needed to have it
clean so you pretty much need to learn
how to clean your camera sensor and a
good camera cleaning setup is one of the
first things that I recommend people
purchase to get to your sensor of course
you have to remove your lens after that
check your camera's manual to determine
exactly how to open the mirror on SLRs
that have a mirror in there I'm going to
go into the menu system here and open up
the sensor if you put a DSLR in cleaning
mode it's gonna cause the mirror to flip
up this exposes the sensor to the world
so you don't want it to be in that state
for very long the beer helps protect it
but obviously you have to do that while
you're cleaning it if you look online
you'll find dozens of different sensor
cleaning solutions and I've gone through
just about all of them most of them
don't work very well at all in fact a
lot of them end up leaving more and more
dust on the sensor they're actually
counterproductive but I found one
solution that does work it is the sensor
clear loop it's a multi component solute
it comes with this dust blower and some
brushes that will help remove things and
I should say I don't have any
relationship to this company I'm not
getting paid anything this is what works
for me and I've tried everything
so the first step I do is to take this
blower and just try to blow the dust out
I was approached it from one side and
then blow into the opposite corner and
that's not going to get everything it's
really blowing around a lot of dust in
there but it does help the next step
that I use is to pull up my sensor loop
this is basically a special lens that
allows you to see the sensor up close
think of it as a tiny little macro lens
for your eye and what you'll do is
you'll set it right in your camera's
mount and look through it it has a light
in it that lights up the sensor for you
looking through there I can see I still
have several pieces of dust which almost
always happens because this is not
foolproof so now that I've identified
that I have dust and about where it is
I'm going to pull out a sensor cleaner
these are little brushes this one comes
with this that allow you to kind of push
the dust out of the way and this works
pretty well now you'll notice that this
loop has an opening on it this is
specifically designed to allow you to
push the sensor cleaner in here so I can
kind of watch what I'm doing and pull
each piece of dust out now what most
people tell you to do is to push the
dust to the corners and sometimes you
have to resort to that what I start by
doing is to just press down on the dust
gently and that's usually enough to have
it pick up on the end of the sensor now
if you just keep doing that for every
piece of dust withdrawal end up doing is
just transplanting your dust around
sometimes you even end up adding more
dust because dust gets on here too so I
pick up a couple of pieces of dust and I
just whack it on a counter to clean the
dust off and then I go back in and clean
up more dust just one piece at a time
this opening on the loop isn't
completely foolproof when I have this in
there I can't see different parts of it
so a lot of time what I end up doing is
just making a mental note of where the
dust was and taking this off and then
just
dabbing it a little bit and whacking it
dab and wax up I'll look through again
and it looks pretty clear this time so
if you have your own solution I'd love
to hear what works for you you can find
me on Facebook or you can send me an
email at Tony at Northrup dot org if you
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Tony Northrup photography the book
stunning digital photography has more
than two hours of videos just like this
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