Eclipse E2 | SHIMWORLD

[ A True Story: The Road to Victory Begin With A Clean Sensor ]

THE SUBJECT OF CAMERA SENSOR CLEANING is rife with controversy, fear and doubt that can leave you helpless and frustrated. So I’ll begin this post with a humour to take the edge off a bit. It’s also a reminder why we’re better at technical documentation than the affairs of the heart!

W H Y G U Y S D O N ‘ T W R I T E A D V I C E C O L U M N S

Dear Abie,
The other day I set off for work. I hadn’t gone more than two kilometres when my engine conked out and the car shuddered to a halt. I walked back home, only to find my husband making love to our neighbour. He was let go from his job six months ago, and he says he has been feeling increasingly depressed and worthless. I love him very much, but I don’t know if I can trust him any more. What should I do?

Dear Frustrated,
A car stalling can be caused by a variety of faults with the engine. Check that there is no debris in the fuel line. If it’s clear, check the jubilee clips holding the vacuum pipes onto the inlet manifold. Or it could be that the fuel pump itself is faulty, causing low delivery pressure to the carburetor float chamber. I hope this helps.

from E.T. Thompson in Reader’s Digest April 2008

Love it or hate it, digital photography is a can of worms. Dust in the polluted environment we live in is inevitable. It’s the one common element professional and serious amateur photographers have in common with their digital SLRs. Some of us are fortunate to have their equipment professionally cleaned at a facility near them. The nearest facility for me is a 2.5 hours two-way commute just to drop the camera off! Failing that, I could always catch a plane and drop it off at Canon Singapore and hang out at Starbucks for a few days!

Either way, it’s financially and logistically impractical. So I had to improvise in order to make life’s inevitable more manageable. Something I’m sure you all can appreciate! The motivation for this effort comes from fellow professionals and SHIMWORLD readers who’s asked me about how I clean my EOS 5D and 20D sensor and focus screen.

Cleaning the focus screen and sensor is no laughing matter and it isn’t something I recommend doing DIY. The chances of screwing things up as I’ve done so in the beginning are quite high so YOU’VE BEEN WARNED. There are tens and hundreds of sensor cleaning articles on the web so I won’t repeat what’s been written. I will however say this—there has been repeated warnings to leave FOCUS SCREEN, MIRROR and even the SENSOR alone for obvious reasons—the focus screen can be cleaned successfully using the right combination of products. In this case, the items are SENSOR SWABS and ECLIPSE fluid. The crystal-clear focus screen you see here is after cleaning using a used swab (I recycle the used swabs handy after I’ve used them on the more delicate sensor). The picture below (right) shows mechanism that holds the focusing screen between metal shims. It’s important to note the direction they come out so you don’t end up putting them in reverse.

THE TOOLS to get the job done. Sensor Swabs/PEC PADS. Many say they are the same thing both being “non abrasive” and lint-free but the cost of the Sensor Swabs is astronomical compared to a pack of PEC PAD. Putting them side by side, the texture of the wipes are visibly different. Photographic Solutions, the manufacturer advises against using the PEC PAD to clean camera sensors and prior to getting the Tin Oxide coated EOS 5D sensor, I had been using them on the 20D’s sensor successfully.

The SENSOR SWAB wipes come in a variety of sizes to accommodate the different sensor sizes. For instance the swab on the left below is Type 2 for use on cropped sensor such as Canon 400D/20D, Nikon D1/H/X, Olympus E1 and so forth. Type 3 on the right is much bigger for full frame sensors such as Canon 1Ds, 5D, Kodak 14n, Leica Digital Modul-R etc. I have found Type 3 swab annoying to use even on the 5D sensor. Although it fits comfortably in the 5D chamber, there’s no room to wiggle the wand when needed. It’s my personal preference to use Type 2 swabs instead.

ECLIPSE fluids come in two types. The original Eclipse is pure methanol while the newer Eclipse E2 is a mixture of methanol, ethanol and isopropanol developed for cleaning tin oxide coated sensor. According to a source, testing showed that pure methanol reacts with tin oxide coating. Before you embark on DIY cleaning, you should find out the type of sensor coating your camera has. Photographic Solutions has an updated list of the right products for your camera.

Before you think about wet cleaning method, a good blower ensures easy removal of larger dust particles and other non-sticky debris. The GIOTTOS Rocket blower is a recent addition to my arsenal of cleaning items along with HOYALUX Summit Pro lens cloth. In a recent sensor inspection, the Giottos Rocket blew a sticky gunk onto the 5D sensor and it came off only with wet cleaning. I don’t know if my blower has manufacturing debris from the factory which it really shouldn’t or perhaps it blew grease from the mirror assembly. In any case I am glad I was able to effortlessly cleaned it. Imagine the trouble I’d have to go through just because of one incident like this.

FINALLY THE SENSOR! All this time I’ve been talking about everything but the most exciting part—the SENSOR. Or more accurently, the glass that protects the sensor below it. It is on this piece of glass that newer cameras have the Tin Oxide coating. There’s enough information on the web on the actual cleaning process so I’ll spare you any write-up or pictures that necessary. Below is a photo of my 5D with the Mirror flipped to expose the sensor.

So if newer DSLRs come with clever sensor cleaning electronics, why is there a need to know this? Well, I’ve researched enough to know that at the level of sophistication implemented in today’s DSLRs, the technology is not perfect and while Olympus has the upper hand with their UltraSonic technology extremely effective, it is also not perfect. Don’t believe? Check out the review of the new Nikon D300 anti-dust by CAMERA LABS …

The D300’s built-in automatic cleaning is good only for light casual dust. Basically, all it’s going to do is stretch the time between manual cleanings, not solve the entire sensor cleaning problem. By way of illustration, three of those dozen D300’s at my Patagonia workshop required a wet cleaning during the three weeks, and several others required blasts of air to remove dust the built-in system didn’t get. – Tom Hogan

BEFORE YOUR FIRST SWABBING I highly recommend you take a look at COPPER HILL IMAGES online tutorials written for first-timers. They include very useful pointers that I have not covered here so please invest in a little quality time to read up before attempting your first swab.

p.s. It has also been widely suggested that you should never touch the Mirror no matter how dusty it is for fear of scratching the very delicate silvery surface. In my unorthodox wisdom, I gently wipe it with a piece of HOYALUX Summit Pro Micro-fiber lens cloth as part of my cleaning routine. It helps to always use a blower to make sure the bigger particles are blown off first.

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DSLR FOCUS SCREEN AND SENSOR CLEANING

Professional Photographer, Ultra Trail Runner