Your eyes are barely open. You have just driven for an hour to get to a spot you know will produce stunning sunrise shots. You have set up the tripod. Hands are numb because it is freezing. Wind is blowing sea spray into the crisp morning air. The ultra wide angle lens is on. The sky is glowing orange. Clouds are magical. You just know you will get a shot that will blow the Flickr crowd out of their chairs. Set the camera up. A nice narrow aperture to give you a lovely wide depth of field. Just as the sun peeps its head over the horizon, you spot dolphins leaping from the water. Bugger the wide angle lens, time for some reach. You fumble in the cold. Grab the 200mm lens in one hand, try and unbolt the 16mm with the other. Hurry, they don’t hang around. Long lens on, just in time to get a dolphin leap right in front of the rising sun. SNAP! Despite the fact you are standing still, your heart is racing. You look at the LCD and bask in the glory of the most magnificent shot since Ansel Adams spotted a moonrise.

Fast forward an hour and you have just plugged the memory card into the card reader. You can hardly wait for Lightroom to fire up. Import, import you damned thing. And then, there it is, in front of your eyes on the 22″ screen. WHAT THE $@*#? What the hell are all those bloody spots every where? Arrrgghhhhhhh!!!!!!

Obviously, not everyone learns about sensor dust this way. Actually, I didn’t either, but what harm is a quick yarn to highlight a modern problem. With the old film SLR cameras, you didn’t get dust all over the sensor, it got all over the mirror, but not the sensor. In the little tale above, when the fictional photographer changed lenses, he/she probably got a nice old blast of sea spray into the camera when he/she changed lenses. Actually, any time you need to change lenses is a potential hazard. Unless you do your own sensor cleans, it can become an expensive past time changing lenses out in the elements.

So what about cleaning the sensor your self? Should you do it? In my humble opinion, yes you should. I don’t know the cost to get it done in Europe, America or anywhere else, but out here in the little place called Australia, it could be anywhere from $50 to $100 to have it professionally cleaned. For that sort of coin, you could buy a whole cleaning set up. I get mine from Quality Camera Sales. Stu Simmonds’ customer service is second to none. You can get most of the cleaning gear from any good camera shop, but given some of the advice I have heard from camera shops, I would recommend giving Stu a call.

The link below is just one of many tutorials on cleaning your sensor. YouTube has loads of sensor cleaning videos if you want to get a better idea of what you are up against. The first few times you do it, it will probably be a bit nerve racking, but stick with it, it gets less stressful. Below is a couple of shots to show how much difference it can make. Spend some time cleaning your sensor every now and then, and you wont have to spend ages in Photoshop cloning out little round dots and other crud that is on the sensor.

Canon 5D tips » Blog Archive » DIY sensor cleaning tutorial.

Note. I am in no way connected to Quality Camera Sales. I recommend them purely based on my experience with Stu Simmonds.