I deserve some sort of prize for having the dirtiest sensor on a digital camera… I’ve had my D70 for about 4 years and have taken lens off in dust storms (or at least that’s how the sensor looked). I was despairing and thinking I’d have to fork out some cash for a professional cleaning. I’d tried cleaning it with various combinations of reagent grade isopropanol and kim wipes. It worked ok but more moved the dust around than removed it. Then after a few months I did some new google searches and found the Magic Tape method — basically you get 3M Magic Tape (make sure it’s 3M Magic Tape, others leave a residue), apply tape to your sensor (with a D70 you select mirror lockup from the menu and click the shutter release).

Caveats: There are many- your camera is an expensive piece of equipment. There is much discussion around on the web and the consensus seems to be don’t do it! So, I did this on a D70 which has a sensor without any built-in dust removal system and from all accounts a robustish filter in front of the sensor. forums.dpreview.com have a lot of posts on the topic and seem to be against the idea in general with a few people in favor. I found only a few people who’d actually done it and they seemed happy, a few people who tried it and said they’d had to remove guck with reagent ethanol. So, consider yourself warned.

Now, obviously this is something that could go wrong and I’m not a professional anything so if you’re worried it might go wrong don’t do it and if you do it, don’t blame me if some goes wrong. But, I’m very happy I did it, it worked like Magic (Tape)

If you do do it and it works add a comment, and more importantly if you do it and it doesn’t work leave a comment.