I’m used to cleaning my gear myself. But I’m a lucky guy, I’ve got my own laboratory including some fancy stuff as a clean air hood, filtered pressurised air, vacuumlines, lint free wipes a plenty, latex surgical gloves and clean, filtered alcohol. I just want to comment that even though you should be really carefull with your sensor, it’s not made of sugar. Basically, you’re cleaning a piece of plastic. It doesn’t damage that easily. Thank God! So, have a go at the wet stuff, it isn’t that hard to do.

Grtz,
42

Mr. Tim — I think I mentioned in the podcast that after each pass from left to right with the sensorKlear, I take the sensoKlear out of the camera chamber and use my blower (NEVER my fingers) to blow off any stray dust off the sensorKlear. Then I’ll go back into the chamber for another pass.

Hope that makes sense,

Thx!
Marko

I’m also a fan of the lenspens, at least for cleaning lenses. I’ve mostly just used the blower on my sensor, although I have the copper hill kit and used it once to remove a really stubborn blob. I may pick up a SensorKlear, as the copper hill process made me a little nervous — the first time I tried it I got a big smear that was worse than the blob, so I had to do it again. Then it was fine, but my blood pressure shot up for a while there!

For the lenspen and the sensorklear: do you ever worry about it getting dirty, and then scratching your lens/sensor? That has been my only concern with them. I could envision picking up a bit of cruft and then pushing it around over the optical surface (shudder). I always blow before trying any of these other techniques, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

- Tim

Sean — I agree that the 40 bucks is well spent and I myself paid 40ish dollars a couple of times during the life of my last DSLR to have its sensor cleaned by a pro.
…now I feel totally comfortable to do it myself but until you do, don’t stress out just let a pro shop/dealer clean it.

I recently took my camera in for a sensor cleaning, and it was well worth the $40. A local shop was recommended, and they did a great job and cleaned my filthy sensor and I was able to pick it up the next day! It’s great to be able to shoot at higher f/stops again without all those spots.

Those lens pens sound like a good deal, I’ll have to pick one up.

Thanks again for the great resource you provide us.

Keep up the good work!