Hello

[Thomas Huang]

Hello,

I've been taking photos for my travels, been moving around for 4 years and currently in New Zealand, partly with motorized transport and partly on my bicycle. Recently I've picked up spherical photography, and started designing a panohead for a compact setup.

I just bought a sony NEX-c3, my first interchangeable lens camera for the panohead project I'm working on but I'm having a horrible time trying to clean the lenses. I haven't bothered cleaning lenses before, but this time with a more expensive camera and lenses I thought I'd give it a try, but everything I do seems to make it worse!

I bought ROR residual oil remover and pec pads with a microfiber cloth but the ROR leaves behind a whole lot of residue that seems to attract more oil and dirt. The more I wipe or reapply the worse it gets. I tried it on my filter, fisheye, 18-55mm, LCD, and GGS screen protector and they're all now covered in swirls. I was going crazy yesterday trying to get the stuff off. The screen protector is now incredibly scratched after 10 minutes of wiping it, I'm not sure if this is because of the ROR, the cloth I'm using, or maybe because the screen protector is a fake plastic imitation.

I've tried washing out the microfiber cloths with detergent but it doesn't help. I'm going to try tossing them into the laundry and see if it helps, but I'm at a lost as to what to do. I'm afraid to look too closely at the lens in case I find scratches like on the screen protector.

I've ordered some Eclipse, and thinking about getting 3M microfiber lens cleaning cloth, but they'll both take a week to ship. The cloth in the photo below was from an Ebay seller in china and was labeled "3M scotchbrite" and looks similar but it leaves behind a lot of lint.

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Thomas,

Your lens cleaning situation is sure disappointing.

I see that the manufacturer of ROR calls for the use of "a lens cleaning cloth or tissue", as well as untreated micro-fiber cloths.

Best regards,

Doug

[Asher Kelman]

HiThomas,

I'm so sorry to hear of you problem. Likely as not, your Sony lens is glass and well protected against scratches from your cloth. The plastic over the screen could be scratched, but that s often reparable by a coating to fill in the scratches.

I'd contact the MFR of your RDR with a link to this page and ask them for the solution.

Now I've done some investigation it appears that ROR works well in many situations but can be inconsistent and leave this mess. Here's an example!.

But there's more in a photo.net article and discussion on Camera Cleaning and ROR comes under suspicion for ether spreading some material dissolved from synthetic fibers or even perhaps possibly dissolving previous lens coatings.

Originally Posted by Timothy Breihan , May 20, 1999; 08:58 A.M. in photo.net

I have had very dissappointing results with the cleaner that Phil recommends, Residual Oil Remover (ROR). I purchased a bottle recently, along with a pair of Wiko Microstar cleaning cloths. ROR's website recommends against using regular lens tissue, claiming that it is "not absorbant enough for ROR," so I sprayed this peculiar smelling chemical onto one of the Microstar cloths and wiped off the elements and filters of all of my lenses.

After completing this process, however, I exhaled onto the elements to make sure that they were in fact perfectly clean. (A clean lens will fog uniformly, and any grease or fingerprints will appear quite distinctly.) I was very surprised to see all sorts of swirls and whatnot materialize on the elements. I polished of the fog and then tried again. They did appear somewhat cleaner this time, but nonetheless, the swirls persisted.

Now you must realize that I am quite compulsive about my equipment, and especially the cleanliness of my optics, so, needless to say, I was somewhat perturbed. I accquired a flashlight, and, by the light reflected from the front element of the lens, distinct smears of grease or something could be detected.

So I read the bottle. "Do not use with treated lens cloth." Well, Microstar is not treated (treated lens cloths being primarily of the anti-static type, such as Ilford's AntiStaticum), but perhaps this chemical was somehow breaking down the Microstar's synthetic fibers and leaving the residue on the lens. (I seriously doubted this, but it bore consideration.) Or, perhaps the cloth was simply dirty, and the oil ws being redeposited onto the lens.

I washed out the Microstars and then used lens tissue with the ROR instead, hoping to eradicate my little problem, and guess what; the residue remained. However, a bit of ethanol diluted with water took the mysterious residue right off. Perhaps my bottle of ROR was defective, but I have since discarded it, and never plan to buy another.

My recommendation? When you first accquire a lens, clean it with regular lens cleaner or diluted ethenol (NOT isopropyl, or rubbing, alcohol, but ethyl alcohol only). This is sufficiant to remove much grime that can accumulate on a lens (especially if it is used) and should be repeated periodically every four months or so. Remember, however, that overcleaning will eventually strip off the delicate coating of the elements. To minimize such damage, used canned air to blast dust and other abrasives off of the glass BEFORE rubbing a cloth of tissue over them. For intermediate cleaning, a microfiber cloth and the moist breath treatment are the safest approaches, and canned air is the easiest way to remove dust, especially on longer telephotos in which that rear element sits deep in the recesses of the barrel.

and then

Originally Posted by Alexander Karasev , June 30, 1999; 04:27 P.M. in photo.net

I second the above negative experience with ROR (Residual Oil Remover) lens cleaner. I found it to work no better for most, and worse for many, types of lens contamination, than Kodak lens cleaning fluid.

On a separate note, as per Keppler's recommendation in Pop Photo, I went to Adorama and bought the Microdear cloth, and found it to work very well.

Alex Karasev

Asher

[Jerome Marot]

I usually clean lenses by:
-first blowing or gently brushing any dust off
-fog the lens by blowing on it
-wipe with a used cotton handkerchief or old T-shirt

Works very well.

If they is salt on the lens (droplets from the sea... very bad, but may happen): wipe with a wet cloth first.

If you really, really have lots of oily residue, ethyl alcohol (the stuff you can drink as Vodka) works fine enough.

If your filters don't get any better when cleaned with alcohol, just get new ones. It is not worth the effort.


The screen cover of your Nex is plastic and can be repolished. Lay a cotton rag on a flat surface (the edge of a table is fine), apply tooth paste and a little bit of water and polish with circular motions. Don't try to get all the cracks out, that is lots of work. The screen cover can also be exchanged and that is relatively cheap.

[Thomas Huang]

I went to the pharmacy and supermarket and bought isopropyl alcohol and water to mix, hopefully to try to get rid of the stuff on my lens. What percentage of isopropyl is safe to use on the lens?

The isopropyl claims to be 100% but I am very skeptical, I also had to pay $7 for 50ml which is ridiculous when back home in the US i can buy a 1L bottle of 70% for $2. I couldn't find distilled water, the only "pure" water I could find was something which claims to be less than 1mg of solids per liter, for $2. New Zealand is quite backwards by 2 decades, think 1990s (bandwidth limits!).

I'm thinking I will start with a 20% mix and then go up to 50% if I need to. Ironically ROR is has 5% Isopropyl.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Originally Posted by Thomas Huang

Hello,

I've been taking photos for my travels, been moving around for 4 years and currently in New Zealand, partly with motorized transport and partly on my bicycle. Recently I've picked up spherical photography, and started designing a panohead for a compact setup.

Hi Thomas,

Welcome to OPF. I'm looking forward to seeing some of your images here on OPF, and your panohead (collar) looks interesting. I do wonder if the no-parallax point happens to align with the rotation axis of the collar.

I just bought a sony NEX-c3, my first interchangeable lens camera for the panohead project I'm working on but I'm having a horrible time trying to clean the lenses. I haven't bothered cleaning lenses before, but this time with a more expensive camera and lenses I thought I'd give it a try, but everything I do seems to make it worse!

I prefer to start with the least invasive/abrasive/agressive materials and/or solvents. After blowing/brushing off potential solid debris, only a microfiber cloth specifically designed for optics, if needed with some water vapour from exhaling on the lens coating surface, usually is enough. In case of persistent grime, I step-up to a PecPad with Eclipse (which is very pure). However, in pathetic cases even that won't help, and I will switch to a 'LensPen'. The LensPen produces the best cleaned results in my experience, and the resulting clean surface also is less likely to attract new debris.

The LCD cover can be manufactured from a kind of plastic, which will scratch easier than glass. On the positive side, if it can be scratched easily, it can also be polished. There are often suitable polishers available in phoneshops for phone displays. A common brand available in my geography is called Displex.

You indeed should spend some time getting the fisheye lens clean, but try and not damage the coating. Grease solvents like RoR, might chemically react with the coating, so I'd stay away from that. Because the fisheye covers a huge angle of view, it's usually picking up lightsources and a dirty lens will create veiling glare, which will kill image contrast.

Good luck with the cleaning attempts.

Cheers,
Bart

[Thomas Huang]

Hi Bart,
The panohead holds the Samyang lens at the no-parallax-point at the horizon. The NPP moves around depending on the angle of entry, the NPP for the nadir and zenith is a millimeter in front of the NPP for the horizon, but the amount of error isn't much and i think all fisheyes have the same issue.

With regards to cleaning, I read that some people have used 99% isopropyl, so I might use the bottle I bought from the pharmacy directly with a pec-pad without diluting it, although I don't have an easy way to get it on the pad except by dipping or pouring it.

I looked up the materials data sheet for Eclipse and it's 100% methanol. I didn't look closely but the pharmacist told me there was methanol stuff also next to the iso, so I might go back to the pharmacy to have a look tomorrow, although I might get impatient and go ahead and crack open the isoproyl to try it. I read on other forums that the methanol in Eclipse is supposedly highly pure.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...1&changemode=1

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Originally Posted by Thomas Huang

With regards to cleaning, I read that some people have used 99% isopropyl, so I might use the bottle I bought from the pharmacy directly with a pec-pad without diluting it, although I don't have an easy way to get it on the pad except by dipping or pouring it.

Hi Thomas,

I don't use more than a drop or two on a Pec-pad. We're talking about slightly damp, not wet. Also, always apply to the pad, not directly on the lens, and try to not touch the surface of the Pec-pad that's going to be touching the lens.

I looked up the materials data sheet for Eclipse and it's 100% methanol.

That's correct. No ammonia or soap or anything else. The only thing is that it's hygroscopic, so it will attract 'water' from the atmosphere over time. I'm not sure about the deposit, but it may not be grease that needs dissolving, but rather a deposit that reacts with the coating. It's that reaction that we want to avoid. A Lenspen will polish that deposit off with the graphite on its microfiber tip and leave an even smoother surface which makes it harder for dirt/vapour to cling onto.

Cheers,
Bart

[Thomas Huang]

I retried the lenspen and it was amazing. it cleaned everything off, but now its saturated and doesn't work anymore, so I'll be ordering another one. I cleaned 10 highly smeared surfaces. Has anyone tried the non-branded lens pens, or should i only go for the original LensPen brand?

The Isopropyl did not help with the ROR residue, although it did take off fingerprints off the screen, but it did leave residue too. The lenspen cleaned it up.

[Denbigh Gabbitas]

I find that the microfibre cloths do not do as good a job as the hype leads one to expect. I have always used Selvyt cloths for optical cleaning - camera lenses, binocuolars etc. PR or SR, but not the microfibre versions. They are available in the US.

The beauty of these is that they are virtually lintless. The problem with the mf versions is that the fibres are synthetic and non-absorbent. With natural fibres the fibres absorb the humidity and this makes the polishing action so much better.

Normally, a little breathing on the lens is enough 'cleaning liquid', but I use approx 100% isopropyl alchohol where an inevitable partial fingerprint happens - usually coincident with little people being in the house!

[Asher Kelman]

Originally Posted by Denbigh Gabbitas

I find that the microfibre cloths do not do as good a job as the hype leads one to expect. I have always used Selvyt cloths for optical cleaning - camera lenses, binocuolars etc. PR or SR, but not the microfibre versions. They are available in the US.

Great information, Denbigh!

So is there any preference or advantages for lenses using PR versus SR grades of Selvyt cloths?

Asher

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Thomas,

Originally Posted by Thomas Huang

I retried the lenspen and it was amazing. it cleaned everything off, but now its saturated and doesn't work anymore. . .

Have you "refreshed" the cleaning element by twisting it inside the cap?

http://www.lenspen.com/media/IS-20_L...0-%20Final.pdf

Best regards,

Doug

[Denbigh Gabbitas]

Ref: PR vs SR Selvyt.

I don't think there is that much difference, but I have only used PR for many years and only had one SR before that.

I mistrust the Selvyt microfibre simply by extension: I have tried one or two supposedly high quality other brands and found that their lack of absorbancy means they can polish but not clean. I suppose unfair on the Selvyt MF, but I see no reason that they would be any different from any other microfibre. The PR and SR Selvyt cloths are made from long-strand (Egyptian?) cotton and just leave no flecks. I notice that they do a special version which is the same but is impregnated with something, but I have not tried it.

Goodness, I sound like a salesman for Selvyt. Let us just say that in UK, you will hardly find anyone, who has to clean and polish lenses professionally, that doesn't use Selvyt. Here endeth my sales pitch and if anyone from Selvyt reads this, just post a PM for my bank account details.