How do you know if your DSLR needs a clean. Should you do it yourself. Lets help you decide.
DSLR camera sensor cleaning can be a mystery. A black art really but to be honest it doesnt really deserve such status. In my view if you can use a DSLR properly, you can do sensor cleaning and get rid of your own sensor dust.
My only concern is people may not be able to take it on due to lack of knowledge or more likely not having the right equipment or time.
Items such as the infamous visible dust arctic butterfly are important but not as important as other areas of this necessary and potentially trecherous activity.
Taken on with care and the right equipment for the sensor size you have you should be able to clean you own camera sensor with realative ease and in your own timescales.
Another thing worth highlighting is with 'sensor cleaning' is that you don't clean the camera sensor. Instead you are tasked with cleaning the thin piece of glass (for want of a better word) which sits over the sensor known as the low pass filter.
Knowing this should help you decide if its a task you should take on yourself. Regardless of whether you are going perform a sensor cleaning function or if you are going to pass it on to a professional sensor cleaning service you should always make sure your camera has a fully charged battery and a memory card in it. You need test shots (hence the memory card) and you want to be sure that your camera isnt going to power off mid sensor clean while you have a sensor swab inside it with you sweeping away sensor dust. this can be expensive because the mirror shuts down and tends to break against whatever sensor cleaning nomenclature you have in there.
So now you have the right equipment to hand and you have you're camera all ready to go you might think about laying your hands on a Sensor loupe. This acts as a scope (lit magnifying glass in other words) for you to clearly see any dirt, sensor dust or smears on your sensor.
A complete list of the equipment you should have to hand is.
There is a process here that you may have to repeat a few times and that hinges on how much sensor dust is apparent, how much is loose within the camera body and why type of smears (if any) there are on the camera.
Park Cameras' Peter Bond (who taught sensor cleaning to me) provides an excellent description of the process in his article Digital SLR Camera Sensor Cleaning.
He outlines the sensor cleaning process from start to finish including how to determine the need for cleaning.
If after this you don't fancy doing your own the simple answer is to refer it to a professional sensor cleaning service who will price separately for either cropped or full frame services. Fi you do not have the time and confidence to clean your sensor, go down this route. However
