By wxwax.

There are two ways to clean your camera’s sensor. One is a wet cleaning, the so-called Copperhill method. The other is a dry cleaning, the Visible Dust method. We’re going to how you how easy it is to do the dry Visible Dust method.

THE TOOLS

Visible Dust Arctic Butterfly (left) , or Visible Dust Sensor Brush (right- the canned air is not included.)

These are the basic Visible Dust products. The Visible Dust method uses a brush that you swipe across your sensor. Visible Dust makes two kinds of brushes. Either will work.

On the left is the Arctic Butterfly, a brush attached to a spinning motor. The spinning motion cleans the brush and gives it a static electricity charge. On the right is the standard Sensor Brush. You clean and charge the Sensor Brush with a can of compressed air that you’ll have to buy separately.

Canned compressed air cleans the standard Sensor Brush.

Clean the Sensor Brush before every swipe across your sensor. This is how you clean the Sensor Brush. Hold the brush near the can of compressed air. Do not shake the can of air. If you do, it will spit gunk onto your brush. Spray the brush with compressed air for 10 seconds. This cleans dust off of the brush, and gives it a charge of static electricity. The static helps lift the dust off your camera’s sensor. Do this process every time before you run the brush across your camera’s sensor.

Arctic Butterfly Spins Clean

The Arctic Butterfly does away with the can of compressed air. Instead, a tiny motor in the brush’s handle spins the brush, throwing off the dust and creating a static charge. Spin the brush for 5 seconds, pause, then spin it again for 5 seconds. And then once more, for a total of three times. Do this every time before you swipe the brush across your camera’s sensor.

MEET YOUR SENSOR

To clean your sensor, you have to get to it. Remove the lens. Follow your camera manufacturer’s instructions on how to lock the mirror in the up position. Make sure you’re using a fresh battery, or have the camera plugged-in. You don’t want the mirror dropping down in the middle of the cleaning.

The swipe


Did you clean your brush? If so, make one pass across your sensor with the brush. Just one pass, only just hard enough for the brush to splay open a little bit.

The second swipe

Clean your brush. Then make a swipe across the part of the sensor you didn’t get on the first pass. Keep cleaning your brush and making swipes until you’ve covered all of the sensor, going in both directions. With the size brush and sensor we’re using in these photographs, that means a minimum of four cleaning/swipe cycles, covering the top and bottom half of the sensor, in both directions.

And that’s it! You’re done. Turn off the camera, so the mirror can come back down. Put a lens on and take a test photo, to make sure you got all the dust bunnies. If you didn’t, repeat as much as necessary.

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