Hi guys! Thanks for tuning in today. This is Janine, and today I want to talk to
you about how to clean your camera gear while you are out there on safari
in the dusty open game viewer. How to get through your holiday and nice and safely.
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So, when I travel with my camera kit, I always travel #1 with just a
normal micro-fiber cloth. This is my go-to cloth. I clean the back of the camera.
The front of the camera. Whenever we get wet, or we might get some dust, or some
mud on it. This is my go-to cloth. However, this is not my cloth in order to clean
my lens with. Because I wipe my sun screen off the back of the screen, or I
wipe the rain off. It obviously gets very dirty. I only wash it like once a month,
or something...and you would smear all that muck in the front of your lens.
So, when it comes to cleaning the front of your lens, you need to be very careful,
because it scratches very easily. Most of the time I keep my sun hood on. That also
protects it. Some people are in favour of filters to keep it protected. I say this
is my working gear. I don't want to have another piece of glass in the front,
unless I have to. So, always carry a nice little micro-fiber cloth with.
Ideally something that is made for glass. It could be your
sunglasses. Could be anything. Make sure it's clean and make sure you've never
washed it with fabric softener. Not a good idea. There is these little cleaning
packets that you can buy, for fairly cheap, and in those you often find
individually packaged micro-fiber cloth. To make sure they are really clean.
I would never go ahead and now simply clean my lens...because on the game drives
you're going to get a lot of dust on them, especially if you drive through a
semi-arid area (a desert), and if you sometimes are in more moist areas it
happens that you get mud or water splashes onto it. So, I always start off with a little brush.
So, most cleaning kits have a brush with a very soft end,
and you just brush most of the muck off, or the loose particles, that if you
would use a micro-fiber cloth you would rub it into the lens,
and then you would get scratches. So, let's try and avoid that. Those brushes often
have a second side - like a little fleece on the other side - if you really need to
polish something, it is good to have a little bit of lens fluid. You should
treat your sunglasses the same way. That also works. So, after you did that, and you
still see these there is spots on there that you couldn't get off, you can now go
ahead and take a little bit of lens fluid - that you polish out with a
micro-fiber cloth - or again a prefabricated little moist cloth.
Most of the time they're sort of like alcohol wipes.
We even have those from the medical purposes - they are a little bit wet.
So, when you use a wet little cloth to clean your lens, make sure it doesn't
leave those streaky little marks on it, yYou know. That is not so nice.
So, after doing that, make sure you use the dry one, and just polish after yourself.
Then your lens should be nice and clean. So, rule number one, never clean the lens
with a cloth that you clean the rest of the camera with. So, I got a
camera bag made, that I can literally pack my camera like that, so I never have
to take that lenses off. Even if I put it in the camera bag, and that helps.
So that is the front of our camera. What about the back? Sensor the spots is a real issue.
Here you see an image with nasty sensor spots on them...and especially if
you shoot on high f-stop. So, if you shoot landscapes, or if you shoot panning images.
Slow motion pans are often shot on a very high f-stop. Look at all the
sensor spots in these images. Very nasty. How can we avoid them? Well, if you go on safari,
take something with that you can
cover your camera with. Literally just cover it while you drive. Keep it on your lap.
Some people literally get a tube fabricator that closes
here in the front. Something very, very simple, especially for shorter lenses, is
simply a buff, that you can pull over it, so that you protect the main lens and
body from the majority of the dust. That is especially for zoom lenses. They suck
a lot of dust in. You don't have so much of a problem with your fixed lenses.
So, when you find that you have a lot of sensor spots...some of them you can remove
by blowing your sensor out. So, what you would do is, always open up your
camera towards the bottom. Gravity pulls a lot of it out. When I open it, I can go
into my menu, and find the sensor cleaning, under my little screwdriver on Canon.
If I go on sensor cleaning, I can say clean manually, and what it does is
it flops the mirror up for me manually...and says mirror will lock-up after
manually cleaning the sensor. Turn power switch off. Okay, that was my mirror going up.
I open up my camera. Always have the camera facing to the bottom...
and now I'm going to take this little magic tool. So, you always use that, and
you blow the inside. Try and blow all four corners. You never go inside with
your fingers. Nothing oily must ever touch in there. A guest had hair in
the inside. I have no idea how that happened? I took those out with tweezers,
just to be sure. Turn your lens around. Do the same thing
with your lens. You can take your little cloth to polish those connection points.
You'll find sometimes, with all the rattling in the game viewers, those
screws here - by the connection points - come loose, and you'll struggle getting
decent connection between your lens and your camera body. Having a small tiny
screwdriver, to tighten them, often works magic...and then you connect those two again.
Easy as that! If you do find that you still have sensor spots,
I would suggest to give it a professional camera clean.
They're not cheap, and with past camera's, you could easily do a sensor
wipe yourself. There are kits you can buy for that, but the more modern camera's
often have a little film on top of the sensor, to protect it, and to make it less
static towards dust...and if you try and attempt to clean it yourself, you might
damage that. So, I would suggest to get it professionally cleaned, if you find you
cannot get rid of your sensor spots. Last but not least, I like to have my little
silicon sleeve for my body, that I put on. It's a very handy thing. Sometimes a bit
getting used to, in order to find the buttons, but I find it protects it
against most of the bumps and the scratches are there. The gear is supposed
to be weather and waterproof, and dust proof. But, unfortunately not
fool-proof...and I'm a very clumsy person, so I protect my expensive gear like that.
If you do have a lens sleeve, as well, please be aware, that they do like to keep
moisture. Especially in the lower layers - the neoprene layers - there's often these
camera covers for your lens. They tend to mould, so check them regularly.
Otherwise your camera might mould from underneath. If you go to places like
Borneo, places like the Congo to see gorillas, where it is very moist,
make sure your gear doesn't mould. It can help to have one of these little sachets,
either filled with rice, or those silicon sachets inside of your camera bag,
to make sure that your camera bag stays nice and dry, and your camera gear doesn't
stay mouldy, or get mouldy. Especially if you keep it in a place for about a week.
All right, those are the basic rules. You see, I made a big mess here.
That's how it should be afterwards. Your camera should be clean.
If you come from a really dusty safari you should do that literally daily,
to keep it nice and spotless. That will also reduce the risk for sensor spots inside.
I hope this gave you a little bit of an idea what to bring along,
and if you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section down below.
I will try and get back to you as soon as possible.
Have a great day!