The coronavirus pandemic has made us wash our hands a gazillion times a day and taught us to (finally) stop touching our faces. But our cameras are in contact with both our faces and our hands. So, it’s important to keep them clean and disinfected, too.
DIYP’s Dave Williams wrote about it in a recent article, and our friends from Lensrentals are sharing a few more tips that you’ll find useful. Other than disinfecting your camera, they also teach you how to do it with your workspace, and make sure to take their advice and keep your gear and space clean.
Roger Cicala, the founder of Lensrentals, has written a fantastic, detailed article about disinfecting our gear and space, but also ourselves. This is important to know and do during the current COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s good to do it after this is all over, too.
First of all, I believe that we all know that the virus transmits by aerosol. In other words, “if you breathe an infected person’s air, bad things happen,” as Roger puts it. It’s good to know that the mask doesn’t protect you from others, but it protects them from you in case you’re a carrier of the virus.
As for the surfaces, the virus most likely can survive on surfaces for 24 hours. Some lab tests have shown even longer time – I heard in the news the other day that in some conditions it can survive up to nine days. However, in real life, “if the gear hasn’t been touched or breathed on in 24 hours, it’s almost certainly safe; at 72 hours, you can take off the almost.”
When it comes to the disinfectants that you can use, I believe that you’ve picked up a lot of information by now. There are soap and water for your skin (at least 20 seconds of thorough scrubbing), but it also works for most hard surfaces. Then there’s isopropyl alcohol, which will again work for both your hands and surfaces. You can also use chlorine and non-chlorine bleach, but do not use them on your skin! Quarternary ammonium products are likely to do the trick, whereas thymol and triclosan are good against some bacteria – but useless against the coronavirus.
In his article, Roger explains how to use each of the disinfectants. Also, a very important thing – how to combine or rather not combine them with each other.
Now, what about the surfaces that you want to clean? I’d say that it’s anything that you touch often: doorknobs, surfaces such as counters and desktops, your computer mouse and keyboard, phones, etc. Those are the things that I generally disinfect pretty often, and now even more often than before. In his article, Roger will guide you through the cleaning process for all of them.
Finally, when it comes to cleaning your gear, Roger also writes about both the disinfectants and the cleaning process. While it’s fairly easy and safe to clean your workspace and surfaces, cleaning your camera could be a bit trickier. Liquids and electronics don’t really get along, to begin with, especially if the liquids are aggressive like alcohol, chlorine bleach, etc. So, make sure to carefully read Roger’s article and get to cleaning!
[via Lensrentals, images used with permission]
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