Cleaning your Lenses and Camera Sensor
We all like to have clean equipment. I frequently take a soft cloth and wipe my cameras and lens after a long shoot. I think everyone feels comfortable doing this. As I'm most frequently shooting with my rangefinder, I also wipe off the viewfinder and the rangefinder exit windows. I'll often say to myself - wow, now the view is much clearer and it's easier to focus.
But when it comes to cleaning the glass surfaces on our lenses, both entrance and exit, or the camera sensor we get a little more nervous. In truth, with the right approach, it's really quite simple and with a little care, only occasional needed.
Lens Cleaning
Don'ts
Do not use paper based products such as paper towels.
Do not use canned air blowers for lenses, and in particular not on the camera sensor. Some have residuals in the compressed chloro-fluorocarbon or carbon dioxide. The cooling action of such compressed gases is also not advantageous which sometimes results in getting the liquified stream on the optics. This is a no-no.
Do no use your breath. It's full of also sorts of stuff, including bacteria which you don't want to introduce onto the lens or into any of the ring seals.
Do's
Do use bulb blowers, camera lens brushes, camera microfiber or cotton clothes and cotton swabs. Make sure these are clean when you use them.
Begin with a bulb blower or lens brush to remove all foreign mater possible, particularly any thing gritty. This may be all your lens cleaning session needs. If so then stop here.
If not, then what's on the lens will should be address with a moistened camera microfiber cloth or cotton swab. While distilled water is certainly acceptable, it will not remove oils - the prime constituent in say a finger print. To remove oils and most anything else, the answer is isopropyl alcohol - the basic ingredient in most all commercial lens cleaning solutions. I use the standard 70% available at any drugstore - see (1) below.
Lightly moisten and the cloth or cotton swab - I really like using cotton swabs - begin gentle wipe or swab the lens. Make sure not to get any moisture in towards the outer lens rings which could make its way inside. Then follow up with a dry portion of the cloth or a dry cotton swap to remove any residual moisture and potential streaking.
There are numerous Youtube videos which which demonstrate the above.
Sensor Cleaning
Don't worry - many if not most serious photographers clean their camera's sensor themselves when needed. You're not actually cleaning the sensor. You're cleaning the outside glass window that that is integrated on the sensor assembly.
The first question is - how do I know if I need to clean my sensor. Set your f-stop to the smallest aperture, likely f/16 or f/22, and set the focus to the minimum distance. Then take a picture of a clear blue sky. These setting decrease the divergence of light passing through the lens over the senor window and on the sensor itself. If there is dust on the sensor window, the this will cast a shadow onto the sensor which can be seen as a spot in the image(2). You can enhance the detection of these dust spots in Lightroom. With a blue sky image selected go to the Development module, select the spot removal tool. On the lower left bottom of the viewer window enable "visualize spots". Next to this is a slider that increases the spot detection sensitivity. Slide this to the right to see spots of lesser significance. Disable "visualize spots" to return to normal view to determine how pronounced the spots actually are. There is no such thing as perfect, so it's important to assess based on what you will actually see a representative image, with a blue sky being a typical case where spots are most easly noticed.
I've tried bulb blowers, also a specialty brush which you statically charge, and VisibleDust Vswabs. These have all been hit and miss - leaving dust behind. Finally, I moved to the stamp and lift approach. Stamp designed for sensor cleaning have a soft front side which is slightly sticky to which dust adheres. The brand I use is DustAid (3), I like DustAid because the stamp face stickiness is minimal so there is no pull back on the sensor glass. The front of the stamp is easily cleaned and recharged with a simple custom tape strip. The stamp is inexpensive as are the tape strips. The best part is that I generally get perfect results on the first or second try.
In some cases the stamp may not lift whatever is stuck to the sensor window. In this case I use a full frame cleaning swab. Initially I used VisibleDust band Vswabs, but due to their high cost, I've switched to AAWipes brand, available through Amazon costing about 50 cents/piece for a pack of 20. The swab technique requires the use of a cleaning solution. A few drops along the edge of the swab is all that's needed. For this I use VisibleDust VDust Plus which is effective for both water and lubricant based surface contaminants.
To actually clean the sensor, two conditions need to be set. If the camera has a mechanical shutter, then it needs to be locked open. If the camera has in body stabilization, then the image stabilizier needs to be locked as well. See your camera documentation and/or search the internet for specifics on how to achieve these two requirements for your particular setup.
(1) I've packaged my own in a small travel dropper - BURRY LIFE SCIENCE U 12PCS 10ML White Plastic Empty Squeezable Dropper Bottles Portable Eye Liquid Dropper Small Plastic Refillable Containers with Screw Cap and Plug (White, 10ML) - purchased on Amazon.
(2) My Leica M240 has a very nice in-camera sensor dust detection option.