gps review DustAid Platinum DSLR Sensor Cleaner
This silicone tamper is a quick aid for medium duty jobs. It's fast, easy, and grabs most the stuff your blower won't dislodge. The price is decent too. I'm glad I discovered it and will recommend it to fellow shooters.
Unfortunately, there's no single solution to cleaning the electronic dust-magnet (otherwise known as 'your sensor') in your camera. You need a multifaceted approach and it will require many tools to attack the array of dust, micro-strand fibers, and unnamed weirdness that is layering itself on your images. Start with the trusty blower, then use this tamper. If you need more force you could skip the static-charged brush and go straight for the wet method if the blight won't release on the tamper. Be persistent with your attempts and you'll win in the end.
If done right, this is a great product. NEVER touch the black pad on the end of the wand, that's how you get oil on the wand and then it has to be cleaned. Simply pull off a tab, touch the wand to the tab, and then press it onto the sensor. It took me less than 5 minutes to clean a filthy 30D. A local camera shop charges $50 and it takes 3-4 days to get the camera back.
BalasHapusThis silicone tamper is a quick aid for medium duty jobs. It's fast, easy, and grabs most the stuff your blower won't dislodge. The price is decent too. I'm glad I discovered it and will recommend it to fellow shooters.
BalasHapusUnfortunately, there's no single solution to cleaning the electronic dust-magnet (otherwise known as 'your sensor') in your camera. You need a multifaceted approach and it will require many tools to attack the array of dust, micro-strand fibers, and unnamed weirdness that is layering itself on your images. Start with the trusty blower, then use this tamper. If you need more force you could skip the static-charged brush and go straight for the wet method if the blight won't release on the tamper. Be persistent with your attempts and you'll win in the end.
The Dust-Aid is a effective way of removing most dust from your camera sensor.
BalasHapusI have use it on both DSLR and my Leica M9 fullframe successfully.
This product is kind of a anti-dote to the huge volume of products for cleaning DSLR sensors, its shockingly low-tech and works exactly as expected.
REMEMBER: Always use a FULL FRESH CHARGED battery when clearing your sensor.!
How it works, in the box you get a little sticky pad on a stick, its not very sticky, just enough to collect the dust without tearing out the sensor. So set your camera to cleaning and open the shutter, then start gently pressing the pad-on-the-stick in the one corner of the sensor, proceed "stamping" until you have covered the complete sensor. DO NOT try to wipe with this, only stamp straight down and up again.
Once you have cleaned the sensor it is time to clean the dust-aid stick. The kid comes with a couple of cleaning pads, you use them by peeling back the tape on a cleaning strip and then tap the sensor cleaner on the cleaning strip, this strip is more sticky than the sensor pad, as you basically transfer the dust to the cleaning strip. I suspect using 3M blue low-tac tape would do the same trick, but since I have a stack of replacement cleaning-strips for $10 why take the chance with my sensor.
These things are cheap and works well, the kit comes with a little red storage box, about 4 x 1.5 x 0.75 inches I put the box in a zip-lock bag to keep dust out, then jammed it in the bottom of the camera bag.
Naturally sensors DO pick up nasty spots sometimes and there might be a time you need to do a wet-wipe cleaning, but the dust-aid will clean regular dust very easily, it is a great travel solution for giving your camera a once-over at night when on the road.
A word on dust, the dust you see in the images are generally sitting on the surface of the glass protecting the chip, the dust is removed from the sensor by a small distance, because of that distance, dust is more noticeable when using small apertures, you can see dust easy if you do a test shot at f.22 or f.16 - at large apertures like f.1.4 dust will be less visible, but just as annoying if big enough to be seen. I am too lazy to clean each day, but there is nothing like a freshly cleaned sensor.
Highly Recommended.
Needed this to clean the sensor on my digital SLR and it worked great. Was recommended by a photographer and now I would recommend it, too.
BalasHapusThis product works great on all digital SLR sensors. Used it on both Cannon and Olympus products and it is far better than the traditional suggestions for cleaning stuck on Dust.
BalasHapusI used it to clean my Sony A550 sensor to get rid of some debris and it worked really well. Easy to use.
BalasHapusI first learnt about this product which watching a tutorial by LensRentals. They do a lot of sensor cleaning and seem to have a process down that works well. After using the Giottos rocket air blaster, and taking a test picture, there was some improvements, but problem spots were present. The DustAid did a superb job is getting out 90% of the spots in my first run (I purposefully was conservative around the edges the first time, was scared of getting lube on the silicon and smearing it on the sensor). After a couple more test pictures and DustAid cleanings, my sensor was 98% spot free. The few spots that were there were very small, and seen only at an aperture of 32 (which should not be the aperture one uses for the majority of photography applications). The product is excellent and deserves a 5 star rating. I have seen many professional cleaners unable to achieve this level of cleaning. My local shop wanted to charge me $100 to clean the sensor.
BalasHapusAdvice: DO NOT touch the bottom of the product, finger oil will require a wet clean to remove from the sensor.
Take test pictures (white backround, high aperture, focus to infinity, process with high contrast) to identify problem zones. Dust first with a manual rocket air blaster or foot controlled air blaster (never compressed air, I know many people have done so without issue, but virtually every expert advises not to [high pressure, contamination, etc.]). Press straight down, evenly, and lift up evenly. Do not press hard, some dust on a sensor is better than a broken sensor.
In the field shooting,landscapes dust happens. Using this product plus a good air blower, it is easy to remove the stuff: Safely
BalasHapusI'm a nature photographer/storm chaser here in Kansas. Lots of dust this year with the lack of rain made my 60D filthy. I should of watched the videos on how to use this product as I didn't bother reading the instructions I'm a guy) so I wasted one pad. Second time around after the video I cleaned my sensor and it worked great. Maxed out camera to F stop and zero dust particles in the picture! Now to get the dust out of my lenses!
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