Heard a guy at a camera swap say 'don't blow the dust in, blow it out' and it clicked for me

I was at a camera swap in Phoenix last Saturday and this old timer was showing a young kid how to clean a sensor. He said 'most people just blow air into the mirror box and push crap deeper in, you gotta angle the blower away.' I've been fixing cameras for 3 years now and I totally never thought about that. All this time I was blowing dust deeper into the shutter mechanism on my own Nikon D750. After I tried his trick I got way less spots on my test shots. It's such a simple thing but it really changed how I look at cleaning now. Anyone else have a dumb little tip that took them way too long to figure out?

2 comments

2 Comments

emma7212d ago

That line about "pushing crap deeper" really got my attention. So when you angle the blower away, are you literally pointing it sideways across the sensor surface versus straight down at it? I always thought the whole point was to direct the air right at the dust to knock it loose, but now I'm wondering if that's just pushing particles around the edges where they hide better.

the_faith12d ago

I started angling my blower across the sensor instead of straight down and it made a huge difference for me too. Way fewer spots in my shots after that simple change.