Best Method for Cleaning OLPFs

[bevan goldswain]

Why Nitrogen?

 

[Dr. Sassi]

It is. The tiny space will have some dust of course as well. The fan/filter combination goes with the camera --inside -- and runs for a few minutes. The air is then filtered and acceptable clean.
The whole thing folds easily, and should not be missed in any ACs bag. They had an idea... : The suggestion to use it as rain-cover should be checked carefully. Heat etc. ;o)
Have a flash light inside, as the plastic reflects a lot and renders light from the outside useless.

That Koh Gobal portable clean room is bad ass if it is effective.

 

[Luca Orlandi]

I noticed a lot of dust with the new OPLF.
I tried to remove the dust with a blower... without result. :-(
Impossible to remove because it seems inside between the OPLF and the glass in front of the sensor.
I never changed the OPLF, it was installed by RED during the upgrade.

 

[Rob Skates]

Phil, Thanks for your informative post. By "sticky things" are you referring to the DUST-AID Platinum type cleaning device?

 

[Charles Bergquist]

In the same boat, just performed an OLPF swap to STH from LLO and the STH version I purchase was really covered with dust specs. Used a blower and then used the visible dust brush, very lightly. Still couldn't get everything that was on there with the brush and blower, but the majority. Checked the outgoing LLO to see if it was dirty as well, and it really wasn't. Not sure what this means, but the replacement OLPFs that come in the little plastic boxes seem pretty dirty.

I'm going to roll it on my next shoot and see if I notice anything, otherwise, I think all of them are slightly dusty when coming to us.

Also, thanks to Phil Holland for his posts on doing the swap, definitely made things easy and straightforward to have a list of what I need and what to do.

If anyone has any updates on the dust on the purchased OLPFs let me know, definitely interested to hear how to clean them up or solve the problem.

 

[Phil Holland]

Phil, Thanks for your informative post. By "sticky things" are you referring to the DUST-AID Platinum type cleaning device?

Nope. I mean those "sensor gel sticks". Some of those are a double edged sword and they can burn you.

For instance, if it's a sharp particle you could in effect just press it into the surface. However, my biggest concern is I've seen some of those get gummy over time and leave residue. So I don't trust them.

If there is a tough to remove particle that isn't being dislodged with air give a lens brush of some sort a try. Those nylon ones. You don't want to drag a piece of dirt across the surface if you can avoid it.

Also, thanks to Phil Holland for his posts on doing the swap, definitely made things easy and straightforward to have a list of what I need and what to do.

If anyone has any updates on the dust on the purchased OLPFs let me know, definitely interested to hear how to clean them up or solve the problem.

Cheers and thank you Charles. I had a small amount of dust on mine and was able to clean it off fairly quickly. Since then just air and a hand blower have been my tools. Occasionally I see stuff get stuck on the rubber grommet and that can be removed with a lens brush or air.

Why Nitrogen?

Nitrogen. Nitrogen is good, but hard to have on location. Why it's good? It doesn't contain or develop moisture like canned air does. I just saw an AC blast an OLPF with canned air and the moisture left a mark of course. You should always use canned air in bursts, not these long drawn out "blows".

The nitrogen is more of a habit from back when I had to clean the old 4K Film Scanner, which used an exposed cooled CCD which was inside a clean room with negative air pressure no less. Even still it caught particles and needed to be cleaned every so often. The particles mostly came from the film itself. For those who haven't worked with film or film scanning, we would send out the negative to get "Sonic Cleaned" to remove any loose dust to give us hopefully a cleaner neg. Even still, particles still would grab hold occasionally and those needed to be "Dust Busted" on the digitally scanned frame.