Misadventures in Sensor Cleaning

Several weeks ago I bought a sensor cleaning kit from Green Clean USA. The kit sat on the shelf until a few days ago when the sensor on the Pentax istD got so dirty that I had to do something. The spots in the photo are each little pieces of dirt on the sensor.

The Green Clean Process has three steps. First, any loose dust is removed with a sterile vacuum pickup powered by a can of compressed air. This is followed by a swipe of a wet wipe, then a swipe with a dry wipe.

I'm not sure the vac did much to clean the sensor, but it did a pretty good job on the dust that had worked it's way between the prism and the focusing screen. Most of the dust on the sensor wasn't loose. It seemed firmly stuck to the surface. The Green Clean folks start with this step so that dry particles don't scratch the sensor in the subsequent cleaning steps.

A couple of swipes with the wet and dry wipes removed the crud. I'm not endorsing the Green Clean system. It worked well enough, but it's a bit expensive. After buying the kit, I stumbled across this site with information on several different cleaning methods. Read the information and make your own choice.

If you're not comfortable doing it yourself, most camera stores will clean your sensor for a reasonable fee.

gs