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Cleaning sensors by Thom Hogan
Cleaning your Sensor
Are those spots you're seeing, or have the dreaded dust bunnies inhabited your camera?
original: 9/01
major update: 2/8/04
Nikon cleaning info: 5/8/04
Completely rewritten: 10/8/04
Fixed date error: 10/16/04
Minor updates: 1/3/05, 7/24/06
Scope/Dust-Aid added: 7/25/07
Major update: 12/10/07
More changes and additions: 1/25/08
This article applies to all Nikon-based digital SLR bodies (D1, D1h, D1x, D2h, D2hs, D2x, D2xs, D3, D40, D40x, D50, D70, D70s, D80, D100, D200, D300, S1, S2, S3, S5 Pro, 14n, 14nx, and SLR/n). It probably also applies to other DSLRs, as well, but since I don't test them I won't speak to applicability of this information for them.
New intro (please read): this page was first put up soon after the D1 came out and professionals started coming to me asking what those black spots they kept seeing in their images were. When Nikon essentially punted on cleaning ("don't touch your sensor"), I wrote the original of this page mocking Nikon with my famous Wendy's Knife cleaning trick. While my tongue was heavily in cheek with that article, the technique I described worked. Indeed, it worked better than any other solution on the market at the time and was copied without attribution by others, including at least one commercial product.
But a lot has changed over the eight years that we've all been shooting Nikon DSLRs. And today things are even more complicated than ever before (and Nikon still tries to disclaim in the US that you can clean your sensor by touch despite selling products that show you how to do just that in Japan).
With the introduction of the D300, we have yet another variant in cleaning: a camera that purportedly cleans itself. It does a modest job at that, but you'll still have to clean it by hand at some point. Moreover, all of the sensors Nikon uses now have a special tin oxide coating, which some claim can be removed by using the wrong products or techniques. Thus, I've revised this page once again. Please read it in its entirety, even though the b
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