Many camera sensor cleaning companies say they have the purest sensor cleaning liquid on the market so we thought it might be good to put that to the test. That’s why we encourage everyone to do the Residue Challenge and see just how much residue is within a single drop of your current sensor cleaning liquid. It’s an easy challenge to do, here’s how:
Residue Challenge
1. Grab your sensor cleaning liquid and an ND filter, the darker ND the better.
2. Place a single drop of the sensor cleaning liquid on the ND filter and let it evaporate.
3. Examine the amount of residue left behind after evaporation.
4. Compare it with the examples above and see how you did.
So, how did it go? Did it come close to any of the residue images above or was it completely different?
Now, think about the several drops you place on your swab and then applying that to your sensor filter. The residue in the sensor cleaning liquid is one of the main factors why swabs leave streaks when cleaning. The optimal solution would be to have a camera sensor filter cleaning liquid that can not only remove oils and dust from DSLR and mirrorless sensor filters but also have the lowest possible levels of contaminants within it. So when the cleaning liquid is used, it will have less of a chance of streaking and contaminating the sensor filter.
At Dust-Aid, we spent a good three months cracking the code on what produces residue in liquids and found the answer after a three-day-long oven bake at 175F. That’s right, we had multiple samples that we stressed with heat and then analyzed to see what produced the optimal results. We then used that knowledge to create our camera sensor cleaning liquid called Ultra Clean. It’s an expensive and lengthy process, but it’s worth it in order to provide you with one of the lowest residue-producing sensor cleaning liquids on the market.
Pick up a bottle of Ultra Clean and do the Residue Challenge test yourself. You’ll soon understand why we took the extra time and effort to make one of the cleanest camera sensor cleaning liquids on the market.
Cheers and happy dust-free shooting!