clean lens

hi can i clean my lenses with soap liquid. thank you. al.ice

Sure. You don't need that lens anymore, do you?

 

Just kidding. You can use water with a little soap in it, dipped on a cloth, if you are careful to use very little liquid, and very little soap in the liquid. Then you will have to wash the soap off with more clean water to get all the streaks off. Again, don't use much water to do this though, and only on the cloth, not on the lens. This will likely take longer than cleaning your lens in the first place, as soap leaves a messy film. Still, you can do it.

 

You are better off using alcohol, the purer the better. It works better to remove greasy smudges, and evaporates completely. There are also lens cleaning fluids you can buy, but alcohol still works best in my opinion.

Sir Jim,

 

Would alcohol melt or gradually damage the multi coating of the lens element in the long run or not?

 

Just asking.

<p><i>You are better off using alcohol, the purer the better.</i></p><p>If you use alcohol, you might want to get <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylated_spirit">denatured alcohol</a> -- and possibly dilute it with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_water">distilled water</a>. Personally, I wouldn't use alcohol on anything but the contacts. On coated surfaces, it's possible for it to dissolve the coating. Alcohol will also dry rubber, silicone, and some plastics.</p>

I wouldn't.

 

You'd be better off stopping in your local camera store and purchasing some:

 

Kodak Lens Cleaner & Kodak Lens Tissues

 

Or if you can find, R.O.R. {Residual oil Remover}

Just a background note. I don't know your reasons for wanting to use soap on a lens, but

don't become too obsessive about lens cleaning. While a clean lens is a Good Thing, a tiny bit

of dust here and there won't make any visible difference in your photographs in most cases.

It is not necessary to have an absolutely squeaky clean lens surface.

I just throw my lenses in the washing machine with some Woolite on the gentle cycle. Once

a month like clockwork!

Most lens coatings are magnesium fluoride, or possibly some other related fluoride salt(like Calcium fluoride).

 

Per the CRC handbook of Chemistry and Physics, MgF is insoluble in water, alcohol, hexane, and pretty much every other common organic and inorganic solvent except for nitric acid. Unless you're going to be cleaning your lenses with nitric acid(which is a bad idea for a number of reasons), you're not going to dissolve the coating.

 

With that aside, pay attention to what Dan Mitchell said in the above post-a little bit of dirt won't hurt your lens.

Water vapor from your breath is enough to clean your lenses.

<p><i>Most lens coatings are magnesium fluoride</i></p><p>The glass, perhaps. What about the rest?</p>

I wouldn't. Just use a glasses cleaner. If you feel like chancing it, try a microfiber cloth. No chemicals, though, just to be safe.

Certainly keep the alcohol off anything but glass or bare metal. Diluting it with water is fine. It's still a good solvent for glass cleaning. Works well with digital sensor's too. Always use as little as possible.

 

And has been noted, clean your lens as little as possible. Dust and dirt particles will not effect the image, but large greasy smudges will. That's when you need to clean it.

 

Like many others, most of the time I just breath on it, and wipe with a microfiber cloth. Alcohol is for major cleaning issues.

I vote for rubbing alcohol. I have some ROR and that is supposed to be the best but I can't tell the difference. If you have a filter on the lens, you can replace it every few years and the lens will rarely need to be cleaned.

 

A friend of mine who owns a telescope shop uses alcohol on good lenses.

 

I use my cameras so much that I carry a can of air to puff off the dust and use alcohol about every couple of months. So far so good.

Alice, my vote is for moisture from breath and a microfiber lens cloth, like these

 

http://www.warehouseexpress.co.uk/photo/cleaning/spudz.html

 

Unless its massively contaminated, just huff on the lens and clean with the cloth.

 

P

Noooo! Lenses are best cleaned in the first instant using a blower brush. If there are finger marks on the lens then that's a different matter. There is (or at least used to be) something called Opticlens, a liquid which you dripped on to the lens and it dried to a thin film which you then peeled off, taking all the greasy marks with it. Failing that, try a Kleenex tissue moistened with a little 98 percent isopropyl alcohol and wipe very gently.

 

As noted above, a little dust on the lens is no big issue.

The world is a dusty place; a brush or blower works or a microfiber cloth w/o pressure. For things like fingerprints: brush or blow off any particles, then moisture from breath, wipe. If that doesn't work, I use the same product that I use on my monitors, sprayed lightly on microfiber cloth, touch the spot(s), then use a dry portion of the cloth to finish.