I have to say that I've only cleaned the sensor of my other cameras a few times, so I'm not an expert. I did quite a lot of research before buying anything, and eventually settled for a SensorKlear pen, along with my rocket blower. When I first got the SensorKlear, I tried it out on my "most disposable" camera - the 400D, and then moved on to the 40D. Once you get over the initially scare of actually physically wiping something over the sensor, it's not so bad.
But with the 5D2, my guess is a replacement sensor unit is somewhere between £600 and £1000 (and I might be being optimistic there), so I was a little nervous...
Here's where I started (click on the image for a larger view)
Test shots should be taken at maximum aperture - I had the 24-70L on the camera at the time so this was f22. So, this starting point wasn't ideal with spots and blobs over the frame.
You need to choose the manual cleaning mode of the camera which opens the shutter and exposes the sensor for cleaning. At this point, you probably want to be in as dust free environment as possible, with relatively still air, and try to keep the camera pointing downwards to stop any contaminants dropping into the sensor chamber.
First step was the rocket blower. I ought to warn you that using this technique generally moves dust etc around the inside of the camera, and people are in two minds as to whether it's a good idea or not. For some reason, on all my cameras I end up with spots on the focus screen so that's just become a fact of life now and I don't really get bothered by it. Holding the camera inverted so any mobile dust/specks will drop out due to gravity, I gave the sensor a good blow.
Brilliant. More crud on the sensor. I gave it another hearty blast:
Ooops. I think that's a bit of rocket blower on the sensor now. Glad this isn't a flipping expensive full frame camera that I'm mucking around with!!!
At this point I decided to ignore my own rules above and lay the camera down on it's back in the sunlight so I could clearly see the sensor. Despite the look above, the black blob was actually a piece of something white on the sensor, but obviously very opaque. I did a targetted blast from the blower to move it, then tested again:
While better than before, this wasn't better than where I started, so I decided it was time to get out the SensorKlear pen (click here for details).
This is a pen device with two ends - one end had a fine bristle brush which is used for cleaning the lens mount and lens surfaces and does NOT touch the sensor! The other end is like an ultra fine carbon-based solid lubricating compound which you wipe over the sensor surface to remove dust and debris. The cap contains a pad which strips the top surface of the carbon tip from the pen allowing it to be used up to about 50 times.
I did a few strategic wipes from left to right across the sensor, working from top left to bottom right, and was left with this:
You'll have to click the image to see, but basically while it's a lot cleaner, you can see a strip of fluff and junk down the right side. So I did another wipe working down the right, and got here:
There are a lot of people who suggest that when checking the sensor for cleanliness, you load the test shot into photoshop and run auto-levels on it. If you do that with the cleanest sensor, you will frighten the life out of yourself! It's just not a realistic test, so I opted for plain images at f22. Here, I can see things that will interfere with landscape images (in which I generally stay below f16 for anyway), and I'm very happy with the look of the last frame above. It significantly clearer than when I started and should pose no problems at all for real-world shots.
Job done.
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