(This is a new series for me, some basic camera “how-to’s” that I feel like writing)

Cameras, careful as we may be, will always get dirty eventually. Some will get filthy faster depending on the area a photographer lives in, such as a coastal, desert, or tropical area (salt, sand, and humidity issues, respectively). However, the constant for all of us is that our viewfinders get very dirty, very quickly. Grease from our faces and dust from our eyelashes are the two main culprits. When we are sweating or blinking, this only speeds up the process. After about a month of shooting for me, the viewfinder on my NEX-7 gets awful, enough so that images are a bit cloudy–getting to the point of making it hard to get accurate focus on some shots.

Warning, the following picture is pretty nasty.

A heavy layer of grease and some large dust clumps do a lot to hinder image quality when looking through the viewfinder. I’m pretty sure I see some stuff growing, too. Eww.

Wow, when I looked at this photo up close, I wondered if I could ever end up with a clean viewfinder after cleaning. Here is the following method I used, and what I recommend to others as well. Continue Reading