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By B. “Moose” Peterson
[From his August ‘96 BT
Journal (Vol. I, Issue 3 - page 12 -13)]
There’s nothing worse
than to be shooting out in the sun, having just smeared yourself with sun block,
and then to accidentally touch the front element of your lens.
Uek!!! This greasy smear can
ruin a perfectly good shooting day! One
method I’ve always recommended for cleaning front elements, fogging it with
ones breath, doesn’t cut the gooey factor of sun block or even basic skin
oils. Well unless you want to shoot
thorough a fog effect filter all day, you’ve got to clean that junk off and
not damage the glass. I ran into this problem all
too often a decade ago. An
outstanding repairman and technical advisor to my book.
Nikon Systems Handbook, introduced me to a magical pink fluid when
I first brought him my mess. It
worked so well I asked for some of what he called, his “secrete sauce”.
That liquid gold has cleaned my worst mess in seconds for a decade and as
a wildlife photographer, I couldn’t imagine using anything else to get the
great outdoors off my equipment (it’s cleaned everything from sap off the
front element to sticky adhesive from a lens barrel). A few weeks back on one of
my safaris I did a cleaning demo where I pulled out my nearly empty bottle of
lens cleaner (I use it on more things than my lens). The participants were so impressed, they asked what it was
called and where to buy it. You
know, until just recently I didn’t know what the pink juice was called or
where to buy it, just that it worked. I
went back to my friend the repairman and got the name of the magical pink juice.
The precious fluid that cleans up my act is called Lens Clens. What makes this lens
cleaning solution so good, heck if I know!
The chemical components making up the magical pink fluid is a mystery
(actually a trade secret), but the results are not. The high evaporation rate and zero residue of Lens Clens
makes it the perfect lens cleaning fluid. More
importantly, it’s perfectly safe for the multi coatings of our precious
lenses. The other lens cleaning
fluids I’ve tried tend to either just move the mess around the glass or worse,
leave their own film to be wiped off by some other means. I’ve tried many different lens cleaning fluids in a pinch,
but for the past ten years Lens Clens has been the one I depend on. The cleaning of lens
elements seems to be a constant process when you’re out in the field.
Usually left out of the cleaning process, but just as important, is the
camera body and all other equipment surfaces subjected to the natural oils of
our hands (especially when we’ve cornered that great photograph and the
adrenaline starts running) smear across their metallic surfaces.
More important than ever with modern electronic cameras, these surfaces
need to be kept clean. An important
and effective method to keeping all these surfaces clean and operational can be
maintained with Lens Clens. At the end of each shooting
day, I believe cameras and lenses that were used should be cleaned.
The oils from our hands (with or without sun block) leave an oily film on
our equipment. If not wiped off,
this oil will attract and adhere dust to our equipment.
This in turn will work its way into our camera gear in the form of oily
dirt that can potentially cause shorts in our electronics or large dust spots on
the internal surfaces of elements in lenses.
Either case means repair bills and lost shooting time which could be
prevented. The process starts with the
dirty equipment. No matter what’s
used, you want to avoid having to clean the front element, as often as possible,
It’s going to need cleaning enough without you doing it every time you shoot.
If a simple burst of air doesn’t clean off the element and there’s a
finger print (now how did that get on there?) or other stain on the surface, a
drop of Lens Clens will do the trick. A
drop of Lens Clens on lens tissue wiped in a circular motion, working from the
center of the element out, will clean off the worst stain. On a small surface, 52-62mm
in size, a single application will do the job nicely. With larger elements such as 122mm in size, a couple of
applications of Lens Clens will be required as the liquid has a high evaporation
rate (the reason why it’s so good). And
if the smear on the element is some awful substance such as sunblock, or
you’re cleaning a number of elements, use a clean lens tissue each time you
use a drop of Lens Clens. If you
don’t, you could smear the dirt you just cleaned off one spot onto another. The last thing you want to
do is place the liquid lens cleaner directly of the lens element.
Not that the liquid will hurt the surface, but you want to avoid the
possibility that liquid will run down into the internal workings of the lens or
camera. Lens Clens comes in a 1-3/4
ounce spray bottle that puts a controlled amount of solution on a surface.
But as long as Murphy is always around, it’s better to be safe than
sorry. When it comes to lens care,
cleaning the front element is only the start, not the finish.
All the surfaces of the lens barrel are subject to being smeared with the
oils from our hands. To see if
I’m telling the truth, put a small amount of Lens Clens on a clean, white,
cotton cloth and rub the focusing ring of your lens. I
did this recently at a workshop and the mouths of the participants as they
dropped tells of the results. Receiving an
unproportionate amount of skin oils is the camera body itself.
The grip, shutter release and camera back receive the brunt of this oil
slick. These areas are critical
areas to get clean a dust attracted to them soon migrates into the workings of
the camera itself. Once again, a
couple drops of Lens Clens on a clean, white, cotton cloth rubbed around the
entire body will reveal the worth of your efforts.
The camera back itself is a major area to keep clean as dirt from it
often migrates onto the film back and opened camera, then transferring to the
film causing scratches. Lens Clens was developed
twenty years ago for cleaning of optics in their own manufacturing process.
It’s nothing new to thousands of professionals in the optical business,
just new to the user of those optics. They
manufacture four different formulas of Lens Clens, I use No. 1 though not
recommended for use on plastic. A
1-3/4 ounce bottle sells for just $4.35 (The government charges a HAZMAT tax on
shipping, minimum of $5.00, might want to order with friends to help lower
cost.) and will last a long time (years!) They
also produce cleaning kits called Clens Kit. For
more information on this lifesaving (and equipment saving) product, write:
General Production Services, 883 S. East Street, Anaheim, CA 92805-5356 S. East
Street, Anaheim, CA 92805 or call (714) 535-2271. If you take good care of your equipment, it will take good care of you!
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