Some months ago, back in September, I think, I'd PM'd Jeff for suggestions on sensor cleaning, as my own D7000 was producing images that were pretty rough. Here's a couple samples I sent him, cleaned and dirty. (BTW, I wonder why the longer lens shows the dust as a little bit fuzzier? Maybe that image was actually not quite as much light?) Anyway, after a couple of messages back and forth we reached a consensus, which was, "Who knows?" We agreed air was a bad idea, although I seriously considered it for a long time. Old dirty T-shirt, no. Paint brush, no. We didn't really come up with anything. I'd never heard of these swabs, and I was worried about having to send the camera off.
As you can see, that's a lot of cloning, and I was running out of patience. What I did soon after that was basically got brave and decided if I truly screw it up, then I'm out a few hundred bucks, but I don't think it'll screw it up. I hope. I took a piece of that very soft silky cloth that expensive sunglasses come with and used that on the sensor. (I don't wear expensive sunglasses, but the 3-D glasses that came with my TV also come with that cleaning cloth!) I folded it back on itself to make a kind of pad which I fastened to a pen. The improvement was significant, although I still had a couple of spots on the frames that in the right light would show slightly darker. Nothing as obvoius as those specks in the sunsets, but rather like that large dark spot on the right about halfway down. Pretty much a round spot like that, but not as big or as dark. There would be 3 or 4 of them on the frame still, if the material in the image didn't hide it.
After seeing this thread, I ordered a set of those swabs. I got the pre-moistened kind in a four-pack for a bit under 20 bucks. Pre-moistened so I didn't have to find the fluid, too. I just used one on the camera, then shot an out-of-focus flash image of a white sheet of paper, and I can find nothing on the frame. Did one with a couple stops too much flash, too, and it's also clean. I think I've tackled it! These things are the bee's knees.
Now if only they didn't cost nearly 5 bucks apiece! Hopefully the regular self-cleaning will be good enough for a while.
My K-5 is about due for a cleaning now too. I always try the Rocket Blower first, especially if it's one main spec and I can find it by looking at the sensor and shining a light on it. If that doesn't work I'll do the wet cleaning.
So air is ok if it's not the high pressure compressed air. My Rocket Blower has paid for it's self many times over now.
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