The Best Way To Clean Your Digital Camera
By: Amy Renfrey
 This
week I’ve been asked a barrel of questions! I’m very
lucky to have such a loyal group of subscribers. One
the questions I was asked was from John about
digital camera cleaning and what sort of digital
camera cleaning equipment did he need (a different
John to last week).
Well don’t do what I did before I knew anything
about photography. It’s embarrassing, but I’ll tell
you anyway. I was standing at a beautiful beach one
balmy, Aussie summers dusk and there was a rush of
wind. It blew sand all over me and onto the digital
camera. Knowing ‘zip’ about digital camera care and
maintenance at the time I cleaned the lens with the
corner of my t-shirt and went on my merry way.
When I arrived home that night I took out my digital
camera to download the images to the computer and
out fell small particles of sand onto the floor. I
thought “what the..?” I was surprised to see so many
grains. I took off the lens cap and there were sand
granules embedded into the edge of the lens. And
that particular digital camera lens has never
retained the same sharpness and clarity since my
various trips to the beach. After a while the sand
granules on the lens caused the annoying lack of
quality that I previously had. I’ve done a lot of
dumb things in my time with digital photography from
not knowing any better, and that was a doozy.
Thankfully I learnt and am now teaching digital
photography. Camera care and cleaning is a regular
thing you should give your digital camera. And the
best way to clean a lenes? Carefully! This is why
you should never take the edge of your t-shirt and
clean it because unbeknownst to you, you could be
leaving tiny trails of grit and dirt on the lens
causing scratching.
 Remember
all digital camera lenses are made of glass. The
clarity and sharpness you get in your digital photos
relies heavily on the surface of that glass to be
squeaky clean. Nothing must get onto the lens if
you can help it. Its pretty hard to keep a lens
100% clean because of dust particles floating around
in the air, but you can get as close to100% as
possible with some handy digital photography camera
cleaning equipment.
There are a couple of ways you can clean your
digital cameras lens, and that’s with a bit of
spit…..just kidding. Seriously, you must use a
proper lens cleaning cloth. You can use cleaning
fluid too. This can cause some streaking across the
lens if you use too much. One drop on your lens
cleaning cloth in a gentle circular motion with a
will get most marks off a lens.
In popular digital camera stores you can buy a
pretty good lens cleaning fluid. It shouldn’t be
more than $20-$25 depending on where you go. The
digital camera lens cleaning fluid is an
alcohol-based fluid that, just between you and me, I
wouldn’t take my digital camera out without it. The
digital camera lens cleaning fluid is ideal because
it’s not solely for dust but accidental finger
prints and other unplanned smudges.
 Don’t
forget about your other digital camera filters too.
You can have a polarizer on the front of your lens
which will most likely need a clean if you’re using
your digital camera a lot, or if you are using it
outside for a day. You’ll be amazed at how dirty the
lens can get. If you’re not sure, grab a lens
cleaning kit from your nearest digital camera store.
Personally I have several lens cleaning cloths, lens
cleaning fluid, a brush with an air capsule to blow
of dust then brush, cotton buds to get into the
crevasse and a small leather pouch I keep it all in.
The leather pouch is actually a small ladies purse.
I bought it for the size and the durability and
protection it gave my cleaning equipment.
No more wiping the lens with a t-shirt! (Heaven
forbid!)
Happy shooting,
Amy Renfrey
Amy Renfrey is the author of two major successful
ebooks “Digital Photography Success” and “Advanced
Digital Photography”. She is a photographer and also
teaches digital photography. Her educational ebooks
takes the most complex photography terms and turns
them into easy to understand language so that
anyone, at any level of photography, can easily move
to a semi-professional level of skill in just a very
short time. She’s photographed many things from
famous musicians (Drummers for Prince and Anastasia)
to weddings and portraits of babies. Amy also
teaches photography online to her students which can
be found at
http://www.DigitalPhotographySuccess.com.
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