Lens Cap Olympus

Clean Your Camera

Housekeeping tips for better photos and fewer problems.

Fujifilm FinePix Z20FD Digital Camera Battery

Feature: Clean Your Camera to Keep It Healthy

A friend once showed me some digital images he’d taken with his old 2-megapixel camera. They were all slightly blurry, and, for lack of a better word, blotchy. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “They always come out this way.” It turns out that his lens was so dirty–visibly, horribly dirty–that it was affecting the quality of his images. I took some lens cleaner to his camera and, five minutes later, his problem was solved.

You need to keep your camera clean and maintained if you want it to live a long and productive life. Thankfully, most digital cameras require very little maintenance, and only a few exposed areas need any cleaning. In fact, there are very few parts you can even get to without voiding the warranty. This week, let’s look at how to keep your camera in top form.

Keep the Lens Clean

The lens is your digital camera’s window to the world. It must be kept clean and scratch-free, or your photos will suffer.

If you have a high-end camera, the lens probably has screw threads, which means you can add a UV or Skylight filter (available at your neighborhood camera shop). The main purpose of this filter is to protect the lens from scrapes, scratches, bumps, and bruises. A filter only costs a few dollars, and you can replace it if it gets dinged.

Most inexpensive digital cameras don’t have threads for filters. If your lens lacks screw threads, you need to be extra careful and remember to cover the lens whenever the camera isn’t in use. If your camera has a built-in cover that closes whenever the camera is turned off, so much the better.

Regardless of the price of your camera, handle the lens elements as infrequently as possible. Even cleaning the lens in the wrong way can wipe away special coatings and increase the chances of a scratch.

So, here’s how to clean it correctly. Depending upon how frequently you use your camera, every few weeks or months you may discover that the lens is dirty. Pick up a lens cleaning kit for just this purpose. Any photo store can sell you a good kit for just a few dollars. Start with a lens brush and a blower, or a can of compressed air, to remove loose-clinging, abrasive particles–you’ll want to blow them off before you wipe the lens with a tissue. Then place a drop or two of lens cleaning fluid on some lens tissue or cloth and clean the surface in a light, circular motion. Don’t put the liquid directly on the lens, and don’t press hard with the tissue. Let the lens dry, use your blower to blast away any remaining dust or particles, then cap the lens.

You can use the same basic technique to clean the LCD viewfinder and the optical viewfinder. Because the optical viewfinder is small and recessed into the camera body, it can often be tricky to clean properly. Thankfully, you don’t have to worry quite so much about scratching it, since it is neither quite so delicate nor as critical to taking good pictures.

Clean the Battery Contacts

Olympus LI-42B battery Digital Camera Battery

I thought that finding minor corrosion on battery contacts was a thing of the past, but I recently encountered not one, but two different cameras in which the metal contacts had corroded slightly from long-term exposure to a battery. How do you get rid of such grime? With a $50 Battery Contact Cleaning Kit, you ask? No, with a pencil eraser: Gently “erase” the corrosion. But be careful, you don’t want to remove the metallic coating on the contacts. Keep in mind that the eraser is a mild abrasive; that’s how it can remove the corrosion. You can also blast dust and grime out of the compartment with your compressed air.

Protect the Memory Card Slot

Finally, your memory card slot gets more abuse than nearly any other part of your camera. Always be sure that you’re installing cards correctly. Never force them–doing so can break connections and ruin the camera. Also, store your camera with a memory card in place or, if you can’t do that, at least with the memory card cover closed–that keeps foreign matter out of the slot and protects the contacts. If you need to clean the slot, never, ever, ever (yes, that’s one never and two evers) insert anything into the slot that doesn’t belong there. Something as innocuous as a cotton swap can bend one of the delicate electrical pins. If necessary, blast some compressed air into the slot to blow out any intruders.

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