Dust Aid Wand!

One of my pet hates is dust on my sensor! I started this morning with looking at my images from yesterday afternoon and realised very quickly that I had a few dust specs on the sensor. Not a good start to the morning. But then again better to see it sooner rather than later. So I started to get my gear ready for a sensor cleaning. When you are shooting in digital cleaning your sensor is something that unfortunately becomes part of what you have to do. No matter how careful you are to not get dust on your sensor you will. Especially if you at all change between lenses while shooting. I always try not to change my lens outdoors if possible. When I am out on excursions I always try to trek back to the car to change my lens if possible.

It took me about an hour to clean the sensor today. Once I got rid of the original dust I found new dust in other places. Just great!

When I clean my sensor I use the Dust Aid Cleaning Wand together with their Platinum Strips and I swear by it. It is the one thing that I have tried that works very well for me. I have tried other sensor cleaning products as well but this one is what I like the best and it gets the job done for me. I am by no means sponsored by them…. I wish so if anyone that works for Dust Aid reads this please feel free to contact me I do not mind at all. ;-)

The way I do it is I have an image where I see the dust I look at that image to know where on the sensor the dust is so I know where to focus my attention when cleaning it. I then use the Dust Aid Wand on the sensor I feel its very easy to use and I am not afraid that I will hurt my sensor. But if you are nervous about cleaning your own camera sensor by No means do it yourself go to a professional since it can be very nerve wrecking and of course very expensive if anything goes wrong!

As I mentioned it took me just over an hour today to get mine clean this is mostly due to that I do not have a loupe. Using one of them I believe would have quickened the process a lot.

I was looking at one last time I was in London but thought they were a bit too expensive…. Since you don’t use it so often but I have today realised that it is worth the investment in the long run. I could have done a lot of other work in this hour that it took me to clean my sensor. So a loupe is up on my purchase list again!

Since I did not have a loupe I had to take a test shot with the camera every time I had cleaned the sensor and then download it to the computer to check the results. I did this several times in all I took 78 test images.  So you can understand how tedious this process can be without a loupe.

A good link I found:

http://www.cleaningdigitalcameras.com/inspecting.html

But before you start you might want to rule out that it is not your lens that is dirty.

I just want to say I take no responsibility at all for anyone trying to clean his or her own camera sensor. I just wanted to share with you how I do it.

Happy shooting everyone!

Helen

Filing system, Sensor Loupe & Champagne on the Beach in Egypt.

I have this week started a new filing system with my images that I hope will prove to be a good and long lasting system. Cross your fingers please! For a photographer the number one thing is to have a good filing system where you easily can search and find your images quickly your income can depend on it. Since if you can’t deliver quickly I bet there is another photographer out there that can. So you can loose potential income if you do not have a good one. Now I am of course assuming that you already can take great photographs ;-)

Creative people in general are not people with order around them with paperwork etc. chaos seam to be more the norm and that is why it is so important with a good filing system and a Back UP System! Where maybe the latter is maybe the most important part in the soft copy era we live in.

Which reminds me I have to buy more external storage space! I'll have to put it on my purchase list together with some Dust Aid. I only have one strip left and they are so very good. So will have to stock up while I can. I do not know if they sell them here at all in Egypt so have to get some when I travel in a few weeks.

 I am also thinking of maybe getting a Visible Dust Loupe any of you that are using one and can tell me if you like it? Think it might be the thing I need to be able to see the dust specs easier on the sensor so that I easier can take them off. I just did a quick google search and found another brand Ohnar Loupe that also does the same thing it is slightly cheaper though. Wonder if it is just as good?

"Isn't it strange? We spend hundreds, maybe thousands, on a camera lens to achieve the ultimate sarpness. Then, when it comes to assessing the results, we're quite likely to use a £10 loupe with a plastic lens. The loupe is probably the most overlooked accessory in the photographer's armoury. A loupe is a lens. You wouldn't expect much from a camera lens with just one or two elements, nor should you expect much from a similarly constructed loupe. Achieving decent resolving power requires several elements or groups of elements, just as it does in a camera lens. And this costs money." http://www.kauserinternational.com/4xzoomloupereview.htm

I read this in a magazine and I believe its very true. I know I was thinking the same thing wow a loupe is expensive when I found out the prices of them..

Champagne Brunch on the beach!

This image is from yesterdays morning photo shoot. I was up early again taking pictures the sun was right off to my right side giving the champagne glasses a nice sparkle in them. I had to keep on swirling the glasses though to keep the Champagne bubbling  LOL. After the shoot I was lucky enough to get to drink what was in the glasses!!! Unfortunately it was only 7 Up with extra lemon so it was actually quite sweet and probably full of sand in them, it was quite windy even it doesn't look it on the images.