What is your opinion or experience with Sensor brushes ?

[rj lorenzini]

Does anybody have any experience/advice with sensor brushes they would like to

share? .... I am interested in The Visible Dust Artic Butterfly specifically.

 

Thank you in advance for your advice

[therion256]

Personally I've gotten the SensorSweep kit from Copperhill Images, and have never had to resort to a wet (PecPads/methanol) solution to remove the occasional bad dust-UFO which may afflict skyline photos at f/8 and smaller apertures. At times you may need to do 3-4 cycles of charging the brush and sweeping the sensor to eliminate the dust, but I've always been able to get rid of dust that I've encountered. For $14.99+canned air (to blow the brush only!) you can't really go far wrong (but read the next sentence...)

 

Of course, you need to allay your fears of working with the brush inside the CCD/CMOS area with the mirror/shutter in LOCK-UP mode without the thing closing up on your brush...and work quickly yet carefully.

[therion256]

I just looked at Visible Dust's Arctic Butterfly...looks pretty expensive.

 

I offer the alternative of Copperhill Images "Brush on the Fly" kit which is quite similar in operation to Arctic Butterfly and only costs $26...check it out at http://www.copperhillimages.com/shopping/pgm-more_information.php?id=2 and consider.

 

As I said above, I'm quite happy with the Dry/Wet SensorSweep kit I purchased last year (never had to use the wet kit side) but I'd consider the Brush on the Fly kit for when I'm away from home and need to clean up the sensor.

[phule]

I have the Visible Dust 1.6x kit. It works very well. I split the cost with a fellow DSLR owner.

[lukas_jenkins]

I've had good luck with the Sensor brush.

 

Lukas

[greglyon]

I've had great luck with Visible Dust 1.6 sensor brush on D100 and D70. Never had to use anything else to clean the sensor. Highly recommended.

[mark_chappell]

I use the Visible Dust sensor brush and it has worked extremely well for me. One caution:

using 'canned air' is risky because it can contain contaminants that you DON'T want to

transfer to the brush or directly to the sensor (even if it's air, it may be compressed with oil-

lubricated pumps). I use the now-famous Giotto Rocket blower bulb device to clean the

sensor brush before

use -- works fine and in the long run is considerably cheaper than canned air.