Reader's Comments - Index of - Free

Cleaning Cameras
Remember that your camera is just a tool. Don't pamper
it. You can always buy a new one. If you leave your
camera in a closet, it will never get dirty or broken, but
you won't have too many great photographs to show for
yourself. Many of the best photographs can only be
taken under conditions that will render your equipment
wet and/or filthy. That's life.
The photo at right was the result of spending six hours
at the bottom of a canyon in the Navajo Nation. For the
entire six hours, sand blew down from the top of the
canyon and into my $20,000 Rollei 6008 system. Was
there a sickening grinding sound when I focussed my
$3000 50mm lens for the next few months? Yes. Did I
have to send the camera back to Marflex (Rollei's US
service) to be cleaned? Yes. Did the camera get stolen
in Filthadelphia a couple of years later? Yes. So it really
didn't make sense to obsess over the camera, did it? I can still enjoy this picture even if I can't use my
6008 anymore. If I'd pampered the camera, it would just be in that much better shape for the crook who is
using it now.
Lenses
Basic lens cleaning tools are a blower, a microfiber cloth, and lens
cleaning fluid. Try to blast dust off the lens with the blower or
canned air. Finger prints can be removed with a circular wipe of the
new miracle micro fiber cloth (my favorite brand is Pentax because
it is nice and thick; about $6). Persistent dirt should be removed
with lens cleaning fluid, of which the safest is probably Kodak.
Always drip the fluid onto the cloth and then wipe the lens;
never put fluid directly onto a lens. My personal favorite is
Residual Oil Remover, available in many camera shops for about
$4.
Even if your lenses don't look dirty, every few months you should give exposed surfaces a cleaning with
Residual Oil Remover (ROR). Even if you were able to protect your optics from all environmental
sources of filth, there would still be crud condensing on your optics as camera bag plastics outgas. ROR
has a bunch of advertising hype about how you can get a full 1/2 stop of extra brightness from your lenses
after a treatment. I haven't experimentally verified this nor do I believe it, but the optics do look visibly
clearer after an ROR treatment.
I don't like to obsess over my equipment, so I keep a B+W UV filter on almost all of my lenses. I count
on replacing the filters every few years rather than being paranoid all the time.
SLR mirrors
http://www.photo.net/learn/cleaning-cameras (2 of 19) [5/15/2002 7:15:53 PM]