Clean Your Sensor at Home or Send it to a Pro?

Considering the current climate and how active picture-taking isn’t necessarily at the forefront of everyone’s mind, it seems a good moment to clean your camera’s sensor or (if you can suspend taking pictures of your cat) send your camera to have a professional cleaning and tune-up. Obviously, there are advantages to both, so with a little help from Paul Naraine, of PhotoTech, let’s have a look at the differences and do a little how-to.
First, be sure that your camera’s sensor needs a cleaning; there’s no need to touch your camera’s sensor if there is no problem and, of course, always be delicate—never touch the sensor directly with your hands or a cloth. Remember that dust in the viewfinder or on focusing screens or even on the mirror may be annoying but will not affect the final image. A quick way to see if your sensor needs cleaning is to take a photo of a white screen or white paper and check for dark spots on the image. Some cameras even help with an “Image Dust Off Reference Photo” function, but I didn’t need to go that far, because little gray spots were apparent in some shots I took of the blue sky… and the gray skies. Mine definitely needs a cleaning.