It's Worth Taking the Time to Clean Your Camera

Posted: October 22, 2013

[caption id="attachment_11609" align="alignright" width="580"]Image: TechHive[/caption]Camera's don't get that dirty. There is no more common misconception than this. Your camera lens is dirty, and it's affecting your photo quality. Keep your equipment clean and enjoy crystal clear photos.

Dave Johnson, the author of How to Do Everything with Your Digital Camera, and over a dozen other books, shares his method for keeping your camera clean.

How to keep your camera clean

Everything gets dusty, dirty, and smudgy. You know that, for instance, because you have a phone. Most of the time, your phone’s screen looks like it sunk with the Titanic. If you have a digital camera—either a compact camera or a digital SLR—it’s even worse, because the optics are delicate and it doesn’t take much gunk to adversely affect your photos.

The good news is that it doesn’t take a lot to keep your camera clean and in top form. Depending upon the kind of camera you have, there are at most a handful of parts that you’ll want to keep clean. The lens should always be free of gunk, of course. If you have a camera with removable lenses, you’ll also want to care for the rear lens element, the connections, and sensor. Here’s what you need to know—and the tools you need to do it.

Cleaning the lens

There are a lot of cleaning kits, cleaning cloths, fluids, and gadgets to choose from when it comes to cleaning your camera lens.

All you really need to keep your lens clean is a package of inexpensive lens cleaning tissue and some lens cleaning fluid. For the most part, these are pretty much all the same; you can find perfectly serviceable cleaning tissue on Amazon, for example, for pennies per sheet. A 50-pack of Tiffen paper is $6.35. Just be sure that you’re using lens cleaning paper, and not general purpose tissue that’s treated with moisturizer or that will leave behind fluff. You’ll also want a small bottle of lens cleaning solution, like Zeiss lens spray, which costs under $10. You don’t need a lot; a small bottle lasts a long time.[caption id="attachment_11611" align="alignleft" width="300"]Giottos Rocket Air Blaster[/caption]

I also suggest getting an air blaster. Never use cans of compressed air around your camera—you can damage your gear if you accidentally squirt the propellant on your camera. Instead, try a gadget like the Giottos AA1900 Rocket Air Blaster for $7.75, which blasts bursts of air when you squeeze the rubber body.

To clean your lens, start by blowing the lens with your blaster to remove large particles that could scratch the lens during the next stage of cleaning.

Then apply a drop or two of the cleaning fluid to the paper—never directly to the lens itself—and clean the lens in a gentle, circular motion.

Another option: I love the Lenspen. This pen-like gadget has a brush at one end and a felt-like pad treated with a cleaning solution on the other, perfect for wiping away dust and cleaning smudges off the lens.

You might hear advice to clean your lens with a microfiber cloth, like the kind that you get with eyeglasses. Unfortunately, microfiber cloth can leave behind a stubborn lint residue that is just about as bad as the dust you had to begin with. My advice? Never use it on the lens.

Read the entire article How to Keep Your Camera Clean, at TechHive.