Clean Your Camera

Housekeeping tips for better photos and fewer problems.

Dave Johnson

Feature: Clean Your Camera to Keep It Healthy

A friend once showed me some digital images he'd taken with his old 2-megapixel camera. They were all slightly blurry, and, for lack of a better word, blotchy. "What's wrong?" he asked. "They always come out this way." It turns out that his lens was so dirty--visibly, horribly dirty--that it was affecting the quality of his images. I took some lens cleaner to his camera and, five minutes later, his problem was solved.

You need to keep your camera clean and maintained if you want it to live a long and productive life. Thankfully, most digital cameras require very little maintenance, and only a few exposed areas need any cleaning. In fact, there are very few parts you can even get to without voiding the warranty. This week, let's look at how to keep your camera in top form.

Keep the Lens Clean

The lens is your digital camera's window to the world. It must be kept clean and scratch-free, or your photos will suffer.

If you have a high-end camera, the lens probably has screw threads, which means you can add a UV or Skylight filter (available at your neighborhood camera shop). The main purpose of this filter is to protect the lens from scrapes, scratches, bumps, and bruises. A filter only costs a few dollars, and you can replace it if it gets dinged.

Most inexpensive digital cameras don't have threads for filters. If your lens lacks screw threads, you need to be extra careful and remember to cover the lens whenever the camera isn't in use. If your camera has a built-in cover that closes whenever the camera is turned off, so much the better.

Regardless of the price of your camera, handle the lens elements as infrequently as possible. Even cleaning the lens in the wrong way can wipe away special coatings and increase the chances of a scratch.

So, here's how to clean it correctly. Depending upon how frequently you use your camera, every few weeks or months you may discover that the lens is dirty. Pick up a lens cleaning kit for just this purpose. Any photo store can sell you a good kit for just a few dollars. Start with a lens brush and a blower, or a can of compressed air, to remove loose-clinging, abrasive particles--you'll want to blow them off before you wipe the lens with a tissue. Then place a drop or two of lens cleaning fluid on some lens tissue or cloth and clean the surface in a light, circular motion. Don't put the liquid directly on the lens, and don't press hard with the tissue. Let the lens dry, use your blower to blast away any remaining dust or particles, then cap the lens.

You can use the same basic technique to clean the LCD viewfinder and the optical viewfinder. Because the optical viewfinder is small and recessed into the camera body, it can often be tricky to clean properly. Thankfully, you don't have to worry quite so much about scratching it, since it is neither quite so delicate nor as critical to taking good pictures.

Clean the Battery Contacts

I thought that finding minor corrosion on battery contacts was a thing of the past, but I recently encountered not one, but two different cameras in which the metal contacts had corroded slightly from long-term exposure to a battery. How do you get rid of such grime? With a $50 Battery Contact Cleaning Kit, you ask? No, with a pencil eraser: Gently "erase" the corrosion. But be careful, you don't want to remove the metallic coating on the contacts. Keep in mind that the eraser is a mild abrasive; that's how it can remove the corrosion. You can also blast dust and grime out of the compartment with your compressed air.

Protect the Memory Card Slot

Finally, your memory card slot gets more abuse than nearly any other part of your camera. Always be sure that you're installing cards correctly. Never force them--doing so can break connections and ruin the camera. Also, store your camera with a memory card in place or, if you can't do that, at least with the memory card cover closed--that keeps foreign matter out of the slot and protects the contacts. If you need to clean the slot, never, ever, ever (yes, that's one never and two evers) insert anything into the slot that doesn't belong there. Something as innocuous as a cotton swap can bend one of the delicate electrical pins. If necessary, blast some compressed air into the slot to blow out any intruders.

Dave's Favorites: Lenmar Mach1 Speedcharger

These days, rechargeable batteries rule. Every digital camera on the market either comes with rechargeables right in the box or works best with lithium ion or nickel-metal hydride batteries. The drawback to these modern power supplies is the time they take to recharge. With a standard charger, you can expect to wait as long as six or even eight hours to charge your batteries. For a faster charge, you need a smart charger that monitors the battery state continuously during the process to top it off quickly without overcharging and damaging it.

Lenmar Enterprises makes a huge line of smart chargers for standard AA-style NiMH batteries as well as specialized NiMH and lithium ion batteries for cameras from a dozen different makers. The Mach1 Speedcharger (about $79) charges batteries several times faster than usual, in many cases less than an hour. That's pretty speedy, and makes this a must-have gadget for your travel bag.

Q&A: Contact Sheets in Windows XP

For those of us using XP, Windows Explorer creates a nice and very simple "contact sheet" print of all or selected images from either a folder or the results of a search.

--Roy Katschke, Topeka, Kansas

Thanks for reminding me about that, Roy! In my recent look at making contact sheets, I discussed creating thumbnail sheets of digital images using programs like ACD Systems' ACDSee, Adobe's Photoshop Elements, and Jasc's Paint Shop Pro. But I forgot to mention the easiest and least expensive solution of all: Windows XP.

To create a Windows XP contact sheet, double-click on My Computer and open a folder with digital images from the My Pictures folder. On the left side of the screen, you should find the Picture Tasks pane; click Print Pictures. In the Photo Printing Wizard, click Next. Select the images that you want to print and click Next again. Select the printer on the next screen, then click Next. Finally, choose Contact Sheet Print in the Layout Selection screen.

Hot Pics

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

This week's Hot Pic: "Giant Swallowtail," by Gene McDaniel, Raytown, Missouri

About this photo, Gene says: "This is a picture of the giant swallowtail butterfly. I took it inside my wife's flower garden, where the butterfly was settling on a zinnia. I used a Sony Mavica FD91 with a shutter speed of 1/1000 to freeze the butterfly's wings."

Hot Pic of the Month: Each month we choose one of our weekly winners to be the Hot Pic of the Month. For September, we chose "Sunset" by Claude Adams.

Congratulations to Claude and to everyone who won the Hot Pic of the Week this month. Keep those entries coming!

We want your feedback! Send your comments, questions, and suggestions about the newsletter itself to comments@bydavejohnson.com. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered in the weekly Q&A, send it to question@bydavejohnson.com.

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