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Digital Camera Cleaning Kit

So What Should Your Camera Cleaning Kit Include?

You have just spent a small fortune on a beautiful new Digital SLR and a lens or two, now you need to take care of them!

Unless you enjoy hours of editing time in Photoshop or Adobe Elements etc, finely removing dust spots and marks from your files, I suggest that you invest in a digital camera cleaning kit.

The main parts of your kit that you need to keep spotless are the sensor and the lens elements or glass; these are the parts that make the image and any dust on these will show up on your photographs especially at f-stops of f8 and smaller (f11, f16 etc).

If you have dust on the focussing screen or mirror, the dust will show on the preview or through the viewfinder but not on the final image. It is annoying but not essential that you remove them.

A good camera cleaning kit should have all the equipment needed to keep the entire camera and lenses clean;

• Lint free, anti-static, micro-fibre dust cloth - For lenses and LCD screens.
• Blower brush - Brush for removing dust from lens, blower for removing dust from sensor.
• Pen brush - To clean hard to reach lens elements.
• Cleaning fluid - To remove grease, smears and smudges from lenses.
• Lens Tissues - For use with fluid above.
• Swabs - To "gently" remove stubborn dust from sensors.

If you don't spend a little money here for looking after your kit, you will definitely regret it. Wherever I go I take my digital camera cleaning kit with me.

In fact, I was at a local beach yesterday shooting kitesurfers and even though I couldn't feel it, a very fine mist of salt water was hitting the front lens element.

After an hour or so, I looked at the lens and it was covered with a load of greasy spots. A quick rub with a tissue and cleaning solution, followed by the anti-static cloth and it was as good as new.

Obviously a skylight or UV filter goes a long way to protecting the lens...also highly recommended.

$10-$20 should sort you out with all you need and is nothing when you compare it to the damage to your expensive equipment or countless hours removing marks from your images in Photoshop.