Sensor cleaning

The original image

The heart of a digital camera is its sensor. With an SLR, changing lenses opens the body of the camera to the surrounding environment, and dust can enter. Then, when taking a picture, the mirror flaps up and down and some of that dust can fly behind the mirror onto the sensor. When this happens, every frame you take will have a blotch on it. It might be black, or it might be a bit fuzzy. When you start noticing spots in the same place on all your images, it's time to clean your sensor.

I've owned my Nikon D80 SLR for about 4 years. I bought it in Northampton, MA, on a stop we made there in 2008. I used it through all our travels up to and back from Alaska. The amount of dust and the number of lens changes left some serious dirt on my sensor, and I took it to a camera shop in Phoenix when we camped nearby to get it professionally cleaned. The guy in the shop said that it was one of the worst he had seen.

Now, about 2 years later, I'm seeing some slight blurry spots appearing on the sensor. This perhaps due to the salt air and dusty roads on Jekyll Island, where we've spent the winter. This time, getting a cleaning will be more difficult. We have no stops planned near a city where there might be a camera shop capable of doing this. I may have to ship the camera body to a place that can do it.

Two round blotches in the upper right sky

I have explored doing the cleaning myself. This must be handled delicately, as any damage to the sensor will destroy the camera. And there can be no residue left on the sensor when the job is done. Adorama and other vendors sell a bunch of different cleaning kits for doing this job, with prices from $20-$50. I'm thinking that having one of these in my bag is not such a bad idea, since traveling can make getting it done difficult.