Friday, April 2, 2010

A Wonderful Tool for Seeing your Dust

Cleaning dust off my sensor has always been a 20-minute ordeal. You’ve been there: Stop down your lens, take a test shot, move it to your computer to examine for dust, and if you find some, good luck being able to target it accurately. I’d use all sorts of wet wipes, vacuums, blowers, and even my trusty LensPen, but no matter how hard I tried to provide good light I could never actually see the dust particles on the sensor, so I never knew if I got everything off without having to put the lens back on and go through the whole test process again.

That changed forever when I found the new SensorKlear Loupe from Lenspen at the PMA show.  Simply put, it’s like a loupe used to view slides, only it has 4 bright LEDs pointing downward to illuminate the dust, and an opening near the bottom so you can reach in and grab the dust with whatever tool you please. Hear me now and listen to me later: this simple device REALLY makes a difference! Unlike every technique I’ve tried in the past, using the SensorKlear Loupe, you can plainly see the dust. (And, unlike similar products like Sensor Loupe by Visible Dust, the SensorKelar Loupe lets you look at the dust while you're cleaning it.)  My lens cleaning time is now down to two minutes and there’s no need to ever take a test shot.  Highly recommended.

The product is available at most photo retailers and at Amazon.com.   


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Thursday, April 1, 2010

Where have I been?


So it's been awhile since my last newsletter.  Yeah, things have been busy.  My 12-year-old desktop computer died, so a whole week of productivity was lost configuring a new computer and learning Windows 7, Lightroom and Office 2010 (and trust me, the learning curve is far from over!).  Attended the Photographic Marketing Association trade show here in California and have been writing articles for David Kilpatrick (one for Photoworld, one for Master Photography magazine) and of course taking lots of pictures.  But perhaps the most memorable happening of the last two months was (were) the successful back-to-back seminars in Copenhagen and Utrecht (which is about an hour away from Amsterdam).