Rocket Scientist-Giottos Air Rocket Blower.

The Giottos Rocket Air Blower is great. I have had it for a couple of weeks now and it is a great little piece of kit. It delivers a very strong yet controllable, blast of air exactly where you want it thanks to the two inch long nozzle/nose-cone. Reassuringly, nothing flies out of the nozzle other than air, no aerosol accelerant or bits of old rubber for that matter. It also looks incredibly funky on my desk where I use it to blast the dust off of my keyboard!

In the end the blower dislodged all but one speck of dust from the sensor leaving me more than happy with the miniscule £10.00 investmment. My advice to anyone out there would be to get your sensor professionally cleaned (once) and then use your blower every couple of weeks to prevent dust becoming a problem. At about £30.00 for a proper clean I think that it would be a false economy forking out any more money to buy one of the many cleaning kits on the market. I have had my camera about three years and taken thousands of photos and would far prefer to put my spare cash towards a new lens or flash rather than a cleaning system that only comes out every two years. At one point I considered getting a sensorcleaning

In short I wish that I had emploted a blower right from the start rather than fretting about the sensors fragility. I am sure if I had done that, the one anoyingly "welded" dust mote might never have stuck!

When your dreams turn to Dust...Blow!

“Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.” George Carlin.

It had to happen. It was inevitable. Dust. On my sensor. After all the loving care and excessive precautions taken I have started to notice dust on my photos. All the breast beating and "why me's?" weren't going to get me out of this one.

In truth the dust was probably always there, but because I am now stopping down the Sigma a lot more than I do my other lenses, dust is now an issue for me. For a while I was really worried about this and thought that I had better invest in one of the ridiculously expensive sensor cleaning solutions out there. Cash strapped as I am I thought surely there must be another way.

Suddenly I realised that dust was in fact a far bigger problem when I used to process and print my own negatives. In fact it was my constant, irksome companion, until I went digital dust would stick like glue to my negatives and enlarger or attracted moth-like to a flame every time I got my slides & projector or film scanner out. Just look at this photo-not a great picture but a good example of dust drama. Incidentally the camera used was a 1950's Voigtlander Perkeo II-a great camera in the right hands.

Consequently I have opted to take a more reasoned approach and invested in a Giotto's Rocket Air Blower: Under a tenner delivered from Amazon. Read my review coming soon...