Clean your sensor
January 21, 2008 by sil63
I got a dirty sensor. I must confess. My beloved Nikon d70 delivers images with horrible dust specks especially visible in skies and now I find myself spotting and cloning them out in Photoshop more often than ever…
To see if you got a dirty sensor too, you may do this: using a telephoto lens take a shot of a white surface using a small aperture - e.g. f/16 and overexpose of +1. In PS use Auto Levels and you should see the dust specks (at a 100% magnification).
I’ve always been scared of doing the cleaning myself - the only tool I’ve been using so far was a simple blower bulb.
Now I decided it’s time to send my camera to Nikon and have it cleaned up - only thing, I won’t see it back before a month has passed 
You can find detailed articles on sensor cleaning on many websites. Among them:
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I have been using the Eclipse kit as explained on the cleaningdigitalcamera.com link regularly for the past two years with very good results. No damage to the sensor (actually, the IR and AA filter) as far as I can tell.
I have been using the Sensorswipe, pec-pad, and eclipse system for some time now.
The first time I tried it, was fairly scary since I am aware how expense the sensor replacement can be, and Nikon doesn’t really encourage such practice is another matter. But I am fairly comfortable now.
See this link on pbase:
http://www.pbase.com/copperhill/ccd_cleaning
I am looking into the charged brush method, which is a dry cleaning kit, since taking the methanol solution on an airplane is not a good idea. An article can be found here:
http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/digital/sensor_cleaning_ii.html
Good luck.
Thanks for the comments. I’m going to have my nikon d70 sensor professionally cleaned at a Nikon center here in Italy but I think I’ll try one of those sensor cleaning products in the future.