Spring clean your camera gear

I follow a spring cleaning routine every day with my photography gear. Learn how to keep your camera gear at its best..

Spring is in the air, the flowers are blooming, the sun is shining and traditionally this is a time for a spring clean, allowing us to have a fresh start for the year ahead. However, today I'm going to discuss the spring cleaning routine I follow every day with my photography gear.

Hi, my name is Rich Dyson from Edinburgh Photography Workshop and this is Coffee Break Photography. One of the most frustrating aspects of photography is when you've captured some beautiful shots, only to discover dust spots on your computer. Those little round blemishes in the stunning blue sky are actually dust spots usually on the glass elements of your lenses. If you wish, you can spend a few minutes on each photo using the spot removal tool to eliminate them from your images. However, I've always been advised that prevention is better than cure. So today I'm going to demonstrate how I try to keep my photography equipment in the best possible condition with a daily cleaning routine.

We're going to clean both the camera body and the lens. You're probably wondering why we need to clean our camera bodies when dust spots appear on the lenses. Well, there are two reasons. Firstly, if you ever decide to sell your gear to upgrade, you'll receive a better price if it's in good condition. However, the second reason is more important. As with party electric current through our cameras, the static generated can attract dust particles from the body onto the lens. The cleaner the camera body is, the less likely we are to have dust transferred.

Well, let's start with what we need. I use two types of cleaning fluid. For the non-glass parts of my photography gear, I use a clear alcohol-based solution like this one. It's a pure isopropanol fluid. Keep this away from any little ones and it's highly dangerous if swallowed, but it does an excellent job. job of cleaning. And the second fluid I use is a specific lens cleaner such as this one from Tiffin. It's also alcohol based, but it's less harsh. You can purchase both of these fluids from Amazon and I'll add links in the notes below.

Here's a handy tip. These bottles are quite large, so you can buy these smaller bottles instead. This way you can refill them while travelling, a watch that lasts you a week or two. However, ensure that you clearly label which liquid is in which bottle. Next, we need a cloth to clean the exterior of the camera lens. Try to find a good quality microfibre cloth. This ensures that the cloth won't transfer fibres onto the plastic or magnesium components. And when cleaning the glass elements, the microfibre cloth can easily cause scratches. Therefore, for these parts we use specific lens cleaning tissue paper. Once again, I'll add a link in the show notes to the ones I'm using. Additionally, I like to have a watchmaker's blower by my side to remove any large bits of dust. rather than rubbing them with a cloth. You can buy camera blowers, but I've found that these watchmaker ones are more powerful, lighter, and slightly cheaper too. I also have a small box of tools in case any screws need tightening, but generally they're quite sturdy.

Alright, let's get down to cleaning. Okay, so we're going to start with the lens first of all. The first thing I'm going to do is just take off the little camera rows, take off the lens cap at both ends inside of there, and I'm actually going to start with these elements. Again, these can gather dust when they're sitting in our bags while we're not using them. So the first thing I'm going to do is to use the isopropanol solution. So I'm just going to put a little bit onto the microfiber cloth. Like that, you see, not very much. And we're just going to rub where it was just onto the lens cap. There. Now before I started, I made sure that the area around where I'm working is nice and clean. I've also cleaned my hands. So just try and give as much attention as you can to make it a clean environment to work in. So just brush that over and that's allowed the first lens cap to be cleaned.

Second thing again, just a bit more fluid and cover the lens cap here. Probably take a bit more time inside the lens cap rather than on the outside. But again, just a few seconds. That's nice and clean. You get a really nice smell from the side of the propanol. But don't do too much because it is quite, quite toxic. So again, a little bit more fluid onto the microfiber cloth. And just around this attachment here. Just pay close attention to the bits where it's going to join the camera. So the little thread on the side there.

And then finally, we're going to look at the lens itself. So, I'm going to again use the cloth for all these elements that are made out of plastic on here. And we're just going to add a little bit more spray, or isopropanol, into the lens. And I'm just going to rub through there, and you can probably see where the liquid has been on. There's not a great deal of liquid there. I think just ensure you make a full journey all the way around, inside of there. Try not to put your microfiber cloth onto the glass elements, so you can see I'm just going around the edge without actually hitting the glass elements of the microfiber cloth. Just before I start working on the glass, I'm then going to use one little bit more. And I'm going to work on these metal connectors here. The reason I work on those, that's where we're going to have any connection problems. If they get dirty, they'll get damaged. then you're going to get connection problems, you're going to get little messages telling you you've got problems between the camera and the lens. So just gently just apply the isopropanol to there again taking care not to hit the glass elements.

So we've now got a really nice clean external part of the lens so we're now going to get into the part where we're going to look at the actual glass elements of the lens and to do that we're going to switch away from isopropanol and switch into the specific lens cleaning element. These bottles are really nice because you've got a very little edge and I'm just going to apply one drop of the solution onto the glass part of the lens. Then I'm going to take one of these lens tissues, take it off and I'm going to fold it and fold it in a way where the bit which was joined at the top is covered up just so that it doesn't get any paper residue being put onto the lens. Close it into like a small square and we're then just in a circular motion just going to rub very gently. You don't want to put too much pressure on this but we're going to rub in a circular motion just to get those elements cleaned inside of there.

Okay so that's that's it cleaned there's probably still a little bit of liquid on here so what I'm going to do is take another tissue so I'm not going to reuse the same tissue once you've used it once never use it again and if the tissue comes off as that one did in my hand just throw it away you don't want the fibers of the tissue appearing. So again fold it neatly and again we're just going to rub nice and gently onto there just to polish that cleaning we've done. So I'm not applying a lot of pressure onto the the lens I'm just just gently stroking it in there. And you can probably see from there we've got a nice, clean glass element.

So I can, now I've done that, I can put the lens cap on at the bottom, and we come to the front part of the lens. This one's quite clean, because I clean it every day, it tends not to have too much residue on it. If there was any elements of dust, just get the dust blower, hold it at 90 degrees and push down, and that would get rid of any, any dust elements inside of there. So we're going to then repeat exactly the same process again. It's going to be one drop of the lens fluid, another piece of tissue, so we're not reusing any of the tissue again, fold it gently into a square, and it's again, it's round, round movements, nice and gently, from the centre out to the outside, just to get us into a nice, clean glass. clean lens. Excellent. Again, I'm going to polish it up with one more piece of tissue paper. Fold it up. It probably feels to some people a little bit wasteful to using a separate piece of tissue paper, but I'm just really keen that I don't destroy a lens or scratch a lens by having a piece of tissue which has already got some dust elements on it, something So, again, a nice clean glass element onto the front of the lens. Lens cap on. Switch it on and we have our lens finished.

So every lens I've used in the previous day, I'm going to be doing this cleaning routine too each day. It just helps me to make sure that my pictures are always going to be in the best quality they can be, and then it's up to me just to take good pictures, which I hope I do.

So let's get onto the camera body. The camera body is a little bit different. We have the cap for the camera body. Always, before you remove this cap, always make sure that you switch your camera off. The reason for this is that if you leave the camera on, there's going to be electric charge inside the sensor. That charge is going to drag in dust into it, so you're going to bring more dust in by there. So make sure it's switched off, and usually leave it for seven or eight seconds just to make sure it's switched off. So again, we're going to take the cap off, put the camera facing downwards, and again, it's just so dust won't come into the camera body. I'm going to go back to the routine with the isopropanol. So again, I'm just going to turn this inside out just so we're not using the same piece of microfiber cloth. Open the isopropanol. Give it a little spray, and then... going to work on that cloth. Again the bit you want to take most care of is the bit which is inside or is going to be inside the camera because that's where we're obviously going to get most of the dust. So give it a nice clean inside of there put that to one side. So I'm then going to start working on the camera so again a little bit of isopropanol in here and I'm going to start on the back of the camera first of all and we're just going to rub isopropanol just taking care to make sure any elements which are buttons and things like that we're going to be quite gentle with how we clean them. You can see that's given us a nice clean surface on there. Okay give the eyepiece a little brush as well just so you can see better through the eyepiece. You can remove this if it's particularly bad but for me again because I'm cleaning it every day it's it's not in that bad a state. Keeping the camera down whilst I put in the next bit, a little bit more isopropanol onto the bottom of the camera. And again, so that's gonna bleed. You can flick open the battery element. It's gonna be less dirty, because clearly it protects itself by being closed all the time. We'll just give it a little clean inside of there. Again, camera facing down. So every time you put the camera down, make sure that sensor isn't applied.

Now I'm using the Canon R5, and if you look inside here, you can see that there's a cover over the sensor. So dust shouldn't get in when it's closed up. As soon as you switch the camera on, that cover removes. So I'm now gonna clean the side of the camera. Again, if you want to, clean inside of the area where the SD cards are stored, or the memory cards are stored. Once more down, onto the floor, facing upwards. Little bit more isopropanol. I'm gonna do the final side before we start tacking the front. Again, just rubbing it onto these contacts, onto the plastic that's covering it. If you wish to, you can clip open the various ports. Again, because they covered up, I tend not to bother with that most days. So we're now gonna come to the front part of the camera body, and this is really, really important. Little bit of isopropanol inside of here, but we need to make sure that we're not going to go inside of where the lens is gonna go. And the reason for that, obviously, is that's gonna be where there's all kinds of electronics that we don't wanna touch inside of there. And you definitely, if you've got a camera, an older camera, which has not got a cover on the sensor, you definitely, do not want to be touching a camera sensor with any of these things other than if you've got some dust that you can maybe see on the sensor you're going to use one of these watch blower blowers but don't go in there you can if you like.

You can clean your own sensors i tend not to mainly because there's a cover on the the camera r5 and i am really really careful when i'm using my camera to ensure that i don't allow the camera to be have a lens removed when it's not switched on so i've cleaned the outside of it i'm just going to give the flash hot shoe a little clean as well again just to make sure those contacts are as clean as they possibly can be now the only thing i'm going to do inside of this element of the of the camera is a little bit isopropanol again just on the edge of here and those contacts I'm just gonna go inside of there. So I'm making sure that the the cloth isn't going inside of the camera and onto the sensor. So I'm just going to clean those contacts really gently. You don't want to be putting pressure onto here because that can move where the contacts are and then cause even bigger problems. So just be really gentle and just clean those contacts in there and then I'm going to go around the metal element just making sure that that's there.

I talked about having a toolkit. This is one of the areas where you're more likely to see issues with the toolkit. There might be some of these screws that come loose. Just give them a quick check over every time you give it a clean. Generally it's okay it's over there. So we've now got a nice clean camera buddy. We can put the camera back or the cap back onto the camera and we've got clean equipment in there.

So that's my very very quick basic cleaning routine for all my photography equipment. Not much time. It doesn't take much time to do it but the time you spend on cleaning equipment is going to give a lot of payback in terms of less time in editing up dust spots and it's also going to give less time in terms of better capability to sell you gear in the future. So it's definitely worth doing this.

Now the final thing before you go away is these bits of paper that you've been using to clean the camera body and the lens. Don't reuse them. Throw them away. Put them into recycling. They're made of paper so recycle if you can and that's the cleaning routine finished.

Well if you've enjoyed this video it'd be great if you could like it and share it by clicking on the thumbs up button below the video. That way a few more people will get to see it. You can also subscribe to the channel by clicking on this button here. I send out a monthly newsletter to my subscribers with news about photography as well as exclusive offers. scan this QR code to sign up. My name is Rich Dyson from Edinburgh Photography Workshop and this has been Coffee Break Photography. See you next time! Thanks for watching!