How to CLEAN YOUR CAMERA GEAR safely. Looking after your wildlife photography gear while travelling.

Hi guys! Thanks for tuning in today.

Thisis Janine, and today I want to talk to you about how to clean your camera gear while you are out there on safari in the dusty open game viewer.

How to get through your holiday and nice and safely.

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So, when I travel with my camera kit, Ialways travel #1 with just a normal micro-fiber cloth.

This is my go-tocloth.

I clean the back of the camera.

The front of the camera.

Whenever we getwet, or we might get some dust, or some mud on it.

This is my go-to cloth.

However, this is not my cloth in order to clean my lens with.

Because I wipe my sunscreen off the back of the screen, or I wipe the rain off.

It obviously gets verydirty.

I only wash it like once a month, or something.

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and you would smear allthat muck in the front of your lens.

So, when it comes to cleaning the front ofyour lens, you need to be very careful, because it scratches very easily.

Most ofthe time I keep my sun hood on.

That also protects it.

Some people are in favour offilters to keep it protected.

I say this is my working gear.

I don't want to haveanother piece of glass in the front, unless I have to.

So, always carry a nice little micro-fiber cloth with.

Ideally something that ismade for glass.

It could be your sunglasses.

Could be anything.

Make sure it's clean and make sure you've never washed it with fabric softener.

Not agood idea.

There is these little cleaning packets that you can buy, for fairlycheap, and in those you often find individually packaged micro-fiber cloth.

To make sure they are really clean.

I would never go ahead and now simplyclean my lens.

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because on the game drives you're going to get a lot of dust onthem, especially if you drive through a semi-arid area (a desert), and if yousometimes are in more moist areas it happens that you get mud or water splashes onto it.

So, I always start off with a little brush.

So, most cleaning kits have a brush with a very soft end, and you just brush most of the muckoff, or the loose particles, that if you would use a micro-fiber cloth you wouldrub it into the lens, and then you would get scratches.

So, let's try and avoid that.

Those brushes often have a second side – like a little fleeceon the other side – if you really need to polish something, it is good to have a little bit of lens fluid.

You should treat your sunglasses the same way.

Thatalso works.

So, after you did that, and you still see these there is spots on therethat you couldn't get off, you can now go ahead and take a little bit of lensfluid – that you polish out with a micro-fiber cloth – or again aprefabricated little moist cloth.

Most of the time they're sort of like alcohol wipes.

We even have those from the medicalpurposes – they are a little bit wet.

So, when you use a wet little cloth toclean your lens, make sure it doesn't leave those streaky little marks on it, yYou know.

That is not so nice.

So, after doing that, make sure you use the dry one, and just polish after yourself.

Then your lens should be nice and clean.

So, rule number one, never clean the lens with a cloth that you clean the rest ofthe camera with.

So, I got a camera bag made, that I can literallypack my camera like that, so I never have to take that lenses off.

Even if I put itin the camera bag, and that helps.

So that is the front of our camera.

What about the back? Sensor the spots is a real issue.

Here you see an image with nastysensor spots on them.

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and especially if you shoot on high f-stop.

So, if you shootlandscapes, or if you shoot panning images.

Slow motion pans are often shoton a very high f-stop.

Look at all the sensor spots in these images.

Very nasty.

How can we avoid them? Well, if you go on safari, take something with that you can cover your camera with.

Literally justcover it while you drive.

Keep it on your lap.

Some people literally get a tubefabricator that closes here in the front.

Something very, verysimple, especially for shorter lenses, is simply a buff, that you can pull over it, so that you protect the main lens and body from the majority of the dust.

Thatis especially for zoom lenses.

They suck a lot of dust in.

You don't have so muchof a problem with your fixed lenses.

So, when you find that you have a lot ofsensor spots.

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some of them you can remove by blowing your sensor out.

So, what youwould do is, always open up your camera towards the bottom.

Gravity pullsa lot of it out.

When I open it, I can go into my menu, and find the sensorcleaning, under my little screwdriver on Canon.

If I go on sensor cleaning, I can say clean manually, and what it does is it flops the mirror up for me manually.

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and says mirror will lock-up after manually cleaning the sensor.

Turnpower switch off.

Okay, that was my mirror going up.

I open up my camera.

Always have the camera facing to the bottom.

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and now I'm going to take this littlemagic tool.

So, you always use that, and you blow the inside.

Try and blow allfour corners.

You never go inside with your fingers.

Nothing oily must evertouch in there.

A guest had hair in the inside.

I have no idea how thathappened? I took those out with tweezers, just to be sure.

Turn your lens around.

Do the same thing with your lens.

You can take your littlecloth to polish those connection points.

You'll find sometimes, with all therattling in the game viewers, those screws here – by the connection points – come loose, and you'll struggle getting decent connection between your lens andyour camera body.

Having a small tiny screwdriver, to tighten them, often worksmagic.

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and then you connect those two again.

Easy as that! If you do find that you still have sensor spots, I would suggest to give it aprofessional camera clean.

They're not cheap, and with pastcamera's, you could easily do a sensor wipe yourself.

There are kits you can buyfor that, but the more modern camera's often have a little film on top of thesensor, to protect it, and to make it less static towards dust.

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and if you try andattempt to clean it yourself, you might damage that.

So, I would suggest to get itprofessionally cleaned, if you find you cannot get rid of your sensor spots.

Lastbut not least, I like to have my little silicon sleeve for my body, that I put on.

It's a very handy thing.

Sometimes a bit getting used to, in order to find thebuttons, but I find it protects it against most of the bumps and thescratches are there.

The gear is supposed to be weather and waterproof, anddust proof.

But, unfortunately not fool-proof.

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and I'm a very clumsy person, so I protect my expensive gear like that.

If you do have a lens sleeve, as well, please be aware, that they do like to keep moisture.

Especially in the lower layers – the neoprene layers – there's often these camera covers for your lens.

They tend to mould, so check them regularly.

Otherwise your camera might mould fromunderneath.

If you go to places like Borneo, places like the Congo to seegorillas, where it is very moist, make sure your gear doesn't mould.

It canhelp to have one of these little sachets, either filled with rice, or those silicon sachets inside of your camera bag, to make sure that your camera bag staysnice and dry, and your camera gear doesn't stay mouldy, or get mouldy.

Especially ifyou keep it in a place for about a week.

All right, those are the basic rules.

Yousee, I made a big mess here.

That's how it should be afterwards.

Your camera should be clean.

If you come from a really dusty safariyou should do that literally daily, to keep it nice and spotless.

That willalso reduce the risk for sensor spots inside.

I hope this gave you a little bit of an idea what to bring along, and if you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section down below.

I will try and get back to you as soon as possible.

Have a great day!.