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Don’t try this at home: TikToker encourages people to destroy their lenses with rocks

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There are some very daft suggestions and tutorials on TikTok. As I discovered when I tried a few of the photography hacks, there are several that it goes without saying that you just shouldn’t try. This one might take the cake though. After watching a video of a ‘hack’ where a photographer appears to deliberately scratch his lens with a rock to create a ‘cool effect’, one viewer actually copied it and fully destroyed her camera lens.

Photographer and TikToker Illumitatiana posted a video of her using a rock to scratch the front of her Canon 50mm f/1.8 in response to a viral video made by Andres Videography where he appeared to do the same to his lens.

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WaterBear is a tiny but powerful cleaning tool for every lens and screen

Most of us have at least one lens cleaning cloth in each camera bag. Or if you really like experimenting, perhaps you clean your lenses with soot. But guys from KUVRD have come up with a pretty neat solution.

Meet WaterBear: a tiny, yet durable, versatile, and efficient cleaning tool for your lenses. You can always have it with you and clean not only your camera lenses but also screens and monitors on all your devices.

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How to thoroughly disinfect your camera and workspace

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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.

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How and why to “quaranclean” your your camera gear during the coronavirus pandemic

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I made a silly video a few days ago about cleaning your camera for Covid-19. It really was silly – I washed a camera in a sink full of soapy water. It went down well, but there’s a serious message behind it.

We’ve been given the advice to wash our hands for twenty seconds with warm, soapy water, and to not touch our face. What we need to remember as photographers, is that we bring our camera to our face all the time. It’s imperative that we keep our camera clean to prevent the transmission of this disease.
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How to clean your lens with a candle, a spoon and a lens cleaning cloth

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If you use a lens pen, you’ve noticed that its felt tip is covered in black powder. It’s great against fingertips and other greasy residue, but it wears off. In this video, Mathieu Stern will show you how to clean your lenses equally efficient without using a lens pen. You will need a candle, a spoon, and a microfiber lens cleaning cloth instead. Confused? Let’s dive in.

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How to safely clean your camera lenses and filters

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I used to clean my lenses religiously. Every time before I left the house with the camera, and again when I got back home. These days, my attitude towards it is a little more relaxed. I don’t worry about dust anywhere near as much as I used to. But I still try to avoid cleaning them the wrong way. And yes, there are some wrong ways.

If you struggle to keep your lenses clean or want to minimise the risk of damaging your lens while cleaning them take some pointers from Joe Edelman. In this video, he shows a couple of ways to absolutely not clean your lenses and talks about why. But he also demonstrates his method for cleaning his own lenses safely and effectively.

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This is how you clean your camera sensor and lenses by yourself

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If you listen to the wider DSLR & mirrorless owning community online, cleaning your own sensor is the scariest thing in the world. We’re talking Pennywise, Freddy Krueger, and Jason Voorhees all rolled into one kinds of scary. So, we ship them out or feverishly wait for the next photography show, to take our camera for cleaning.

But, it’s really not all that scary. I’ve been cleaning my own DSLR sensors since 2002. After you do it a couple of times, the worries disappear. In this video, Peter McKinnon talks about his dirty camera issues on his recent trip to Africa. He then walks us through the process to get your sensor clean and sparkly again. He also covers some tips to keep your lenses clean, too.

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5 easy top tips for keeping your lenses clean

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Getting dust and muck on your lenses is just a fact of life. There’s pretty much nothing we can do to escape it in the real world. But, there are things we can do to help reduce its impact. And, there’s also things we can do to safely get rid of it once it’s there. When you’re out on location, wiping it on your t-shirt is an option that many take, but it’s not really healthy for your lens.

This video from YouTuber Fangs shows us five tips for caring for our lenses properly. Both how to get rid of dust and dirt on our lenses, but also helping to prevent it from building up so quickly. Keeping our lenses clean falls under general gear maintenance.

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Tearing down the $2,200 Nikon 105mm f/1.4

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When I see the phrase “for those of you following along at home” in a teardown article, I know it’s going to be a good one. This is especially so when it’s the first public teardown of such a new and expensive lens. Nikon announced the 105mm f/1.4E back in July to much fanfare. Many photographers who managed to get their hands on one instantly fell in love.

So, what’s caused this teardown now? Is there an issue with these lenses? Nope, it’s simply maintenance and cleaning. For most of us, a few specks of dust aren’t an issue, but for gear hire company LensRentals, the equipment has to look like brand new each time it goes out to the next client. This means regular teardowns and cleaning of their equipment.

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How to Clean Your Camera Lenses (And Check For Problems)

In the past, Roger has shown us time and time again, that internal dust and other artifacts rarely have an effect on the image quality produced by your lenses. With how complicated the optics in a lens are designed, lenses are rarely affected by these small flaws such as lens dust. That said, every piece of equipment that is on the shelves at LensRentals.com is thoroughly cleaned and inspected multiple times before being shipped out. Cleaning and regular inspection of your gear and help prolong the life and help give you the highest quality of images possible. Today, I’d like to take you through how we often clean and inspect the glass that gets shipped back and forth from our office, and some of the problems that we face.

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