Cleaning CCD in *ist D?

I have tried blowing the dust off the CCD, but it still needs more cleaning to remove small dark circular areas that appear in photos of clear skies.

What is the view on cleaning fluids and swabs such as those at
http://www.ishop.co.uk/ishop/883/shopscr136.html?

Malcolm,

From whay I've seen, the general opinion is to never touch the CCD with anything For the Fuji S2, I've seen people recommend only specialist cleaning if there's real gunk on the CCD.

I bought one of those huge air puffers from 7dayshop which seems to get rid of pretty much anything that's landed on the CCD. Things seem to get lodged on quite tight, and the smaller puffers just won't budge the dust.

Matt

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http://www.mattmatic.co.uk
(For gallery, tips and links)

Thanks for the advice. I'll try the heavy duty puffer route.

Here's a link
http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=&products_id=7525

Hope it does the trick!
Matt

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http://www.mattmatic.co.uk
(For gallery, tips and links)

Thanks. I have ordered one.

Out of interest, a blower might only circulate the dust within the camera body.

Would any harm be done by using a Dyson vacuum hose to SUCK the dust away rather than BLOW it around providing no physical contact is made between the hose and the camera body?

I wouldn't suggest that

Vacuum cleaners can generate a huge amount of static electricity, because of the moving air. Such static could pop the electronics in the *istD.

If you've ever seen the price of a static-free vacuum cleaner, you'll understand!

With the large blower, I find that an angled jet of air will just shove the dust out quite well. It's not been a problem for me so far.

Matt

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http://www.mattmatic.co.uk
(For gallery, tips and links)

Thanks - never thought of that! I'll wait for the new puffer.

If you do need your CCD cleaned, I just found this London company:

www.fixationuk.com

Of course, remembering that the *istD has the same sensor as the Nikon D100...
Matt

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http://www.mattmatic.co.uk
(For gallery, tips and links)

Just an update on cleaning...

Found this very interesting site, purely by chance.

http://www.pbase.com/copperhill/ccd_cleaning



Matt

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http://www.mattmatic.co.uk
(For gallery, tips and links)

Here's another CCD cleaning website:

http://www.bythom.com/cleaning.htm

I hope I never have to do this as it sounds scary. The protective layer on the CCD is said to have a hardness of 5 on the Moh's scale. This comparitive scale is used to classify minerals (talc is 0 and diamond is 10). As a reference, copper coins are around 3, steel and glass around 5. Quartz, the principle consituent of sand grains, is 7 so avoid changing your lens on a windy beach or desert. I scrutinise the back of every lens before I attach it to my *istD, in case there's some dirt attached but small stuff is bound to go unnoticed.

First, a warning: these are my results, please don't hunt me down and kill me if something horrible happens to your ist D after this!
I have succesfully cleaned my ist D's CCD with PecPads (99.999% lint-free) and Eclipse solution (basically ether) as I watched a professional D100 user do. I was appalled to see him dive a swab directly onto the ccd, but it works! I tried it out, very carefully making two sweeps across the sensor in opposite directions in order to not drag dust across it. I repeated the two swipes with fresh pads three times and every bit of dust is gone now and the sensor is incredibly clean!
Of course, I may have screwed something up and don't know any better yet, but I've shot about 200 photos since cleaning and everything is still good.
I think mine came from the factory pre-dusted, because even in dusty Lubbock, Texas it has not collected any new specs.

Just to add to this thread...
found the UK distributor of Eclipse, Pec*pads, and SensorSwabs:
http://www.crown-digital.co.uk/
(more details from the US website: http://www.photosol.com/)

Have ordered mine already and I'll let you know how I get on
(Have some real globs of dust on the *ist-D at the moment!)

Matt

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http://www.mattmatic.co.uk
(For gallery, tips and links)