Have you ever spent a few hours out and about with your shiny digital SLR snapping pics, only to come home and discover your sensor had a bunch of dust particles, and your pics need some serious retouching to get rid of all those grey blobs? I know I have, and sometimes using a blower just isn’t enough.
Behold the VisibleDust Butterfly 724: a compact, battery-operated, dry brush CMOS sensor cleaner for your digital SLR.
The concept is simple – the brush is statically charged and attracts dust particles as you wipe your camera’s sensor with it. After you’re done (and have closed up your camera), you hit the power button which rotates the brush at high-speed, flinging the trapped dust particles hither and yon, and renewing the static charge to the brush for the next cleaning.
The brush takes 2 AAA batteries, comes in a nice travel case, has a grippy rubberized coating, and doubles as a marital aid (just seeing if you’re paying attention, but you have to admit, the name alone is an interesting choice all things considered). Apparently there are three colours, but you don’t get to choose. By a stroke of luck, mine matches the inside of my camera bag quite nicely.
A great companion to Giotto’s Rocket Air tool for cleaning on the go, and recommended. It’s around $100 from VisibleDust, who also make a variety of dry and wet sensor and chamber cleaning goodies (not cheap, but effective). There’s also a thicker sensor brush available for ~$50 for heavy duty cleaning/one-pass full-frame sweeps.
And what about finger prints?
If you are touching the sensor in your dSLR with your fingers, it should probably be taken away from you. 🙂 The brush is designed to clean dust and other loose, dry particles from the sensor. Oil (fingerprints 😉 ), gunk, and other stuff that has become affixed can be cleaned with VisibleDust’s wet cleaning products, or a trip to the camera’s service center.
Some people also use nylon makeup brushes (nylon charges). Super cheap by comparison, but you do have to make sure there is no glue residue on the fibres before hand. A few washings, some methanol, etc. should do the trick. Run it past a hair drier to charge and blow out dust.