Dust-Aid camera sensor cleaner

My dSLR is showing some signs of age as it has accumulated some ugly specs of dirt and dust on its sensor from continual use. And since I’m not lucky enough to own a Canon camera with the Integrated Cleaning System 2, I had to find a way to clean my sensor the old fashioned way.

This is normal wear and tear for dSLR cameras, so I wasn’t very surprised. Unfortunately, I discovered that there was dirt on it during my vacation in Perth. So instead of trying to clean it myself with “unprofessional” tools, I opted to use my compact digital camera (Canon SD450) instead for the 2nd half of my trip in Western Australia. I was kind of upset at first that I had to shoot the fantastic scenery of Western Australia with my compact digital rather than my dSLR, but I got over it as the days went by (there are pros to using a smaller camera on vacation). :)

Anyway, I knew that sensor cleaning in general was not a cheap service, so I went into a local camera store to see what other methods were available, and to my surprise, they recommended not going to get it done and instead buying the Dust-Aid kit which is much cheaper and economical. I was sold, and so I bought it and went home to clean clean clean!

Compared to all of the choices out there regarding sensor cleaning, it’s one of the less expensive options. It retails for $39.95 and contains 12 cleaning foam tapes. This breaks down to $3.33 per cleaning, which is peanuts when compared to the time spent removing countless dust spots from a dirty sensor. As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention saves hours of headache. I know… I’ve been there for hours cleaning and cloning the same dust spots off of 125 digital images from one shoot. This was one of the driving forces why I set out to create this product. How much is your time worth? I would have gladly paid $3.33 to save me those hours of cloning the same dust spots, over and over again.

Check out the Dust-Aid instructional video below.

The most important thing to remember when using Dust-Aid is to…”rotate, then lean to one side.” And repeat. Now your sensor should be relatively clean!

So what do I think of it now that I’ve done it once? Well, it was simple enough and it certainly did it’s job. I’m glad I saved money and I’m glad I have more Dust-Aid foam pads available for future sensor cleaning jobs. Plus, the tin can that it comes in is uber-cool.

I’m never leaving for a trip without Dust-Aid ever again.