ken zirkel

I’m a big fan of berries. I grow strawberries and blackberries in my yard. While my summer berry consumption is pretty high, my winter consumption tends to die down a bit.

But I was inspired by this article on “The Power of Berries” in the New York Times. Apparently black and red raspberries, blackberries, strawberries are even higher in cancer-fighting ingredients than previously thought. A comment in that article led me to Mark Bitten’s easy sorbet recipe. Since the Wife was going to Trader Joe’s anyway, I had her pick up a couple of bags of frozen berries. In just minutes I was enjoying homemade sorbet. I diluted the sorbet down a bit to make a smoothie for Son.

Son wrote a poem about Groundhog Day, based on Clement Moore’s poem. Click on the graphic to see a larger version.

Daughter does her homework with a laptop and a notebook. You know, that other kind of notebook.

There is a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt about sensor cleaning. Frankly, I think it’s outrageous that there are no good self-cleaning sensor technologies out there. To think that a whole day’s shoot can be ruined because of a foreign object on the sensor that you cannot see until the shoot is over, it’s rather absurd.

Should I clean my own sensor?

I think most heavy, serious shooters should learn how to clean their sensor. If you shoot a lot, you can’t afford to be without your camera for several days while a service center cleans the sensor. If you’re out on a long shoot, you might find that you need to clean the sensor on location. This is an easy skill, and you can do it. Be aware that you’re not actually cleaning the sensor, you’re cleaning the filter that covers the sensor; it’s pretty sturdy. Still, you should be gentle when cleaning inside your camera; you’re not scraping pots and pans here!

There are two types of cleaning: Wet cleaning and dry cleaning.

Dry cleaning:

Dry cleaning is done on a regular, frequent basis. I try to dry clean my sensor before any major shoot. For dry cleaning, I use a Rocket Blower (or Hurricane Blower or similar) followed by a few swipes of a Sensor Brush (from Visible Dust; more recently replaced with the Arctic Butterfly). Then I finish off with the Rocket Blower again, taking care to hold the camera upside down the whole time. I wear an LED headlamp while cleaning, to help me see what I’m doing.

Wet Cleaning:

Wet cleaning is only necessary when there are sticky gobs on your sensor. Because I shoot lighthouses frequently, and I change lenses frequently, I have to do wet cleaning occasionally; maybe two or three times per year. For wet cleaning, I use sensor swabs and the Sensor Clean product from Visible Dust. After using Sensor Clean, I give another go at using the Rocket Blower, Sensor Brush, and finally the Rocket Blower again. This almost always leaves me with a completely clean sensor.

Oil

Once I was convinced that I had a smear that was not cleaning properly with the wet cleaning method. I had heard that the Canon 5D was prone to getting oil on the sensor, so I tried Smear Away, another Visible Dust product. I’m not sure I needed to, because …

Dirty Lenses

Sometimes the blob on your image is not caused by a dirty sensor. It can be that your wide angle lens has a water spot on it. I had this happen on a few occasions. Now I try to do my sensor dirt testing at multiple focal lengths, or even multiple lenses.

More stuff to buy:

Between dusting and accidentally touching the brush, over time the Sensor Brush gets dirty and needs a washing. Visible Dust has a product for that, too, it’s called Brush Wash.

If you add this up, it’s a lot of products. How many you need depends on how much shooting you do. I would definitely recommend that most shooters do some form of dry cleaning.

More about sensor cleaning:

Thom Hogan has a nice Nikon-centric writeup. Bob Atkins has another nice writeup. Visible Dust has some nice product information and demos.

We made another snowman today.

Son has a set of flashcards which feature landmarks of the world. He made a list of the landmarks he wants to visit. Unfortunately, he wrote it on the back of something else, so it’s a little hard to read.

Manchu Picchu
Leaning Tower of Pisa
Hoover Dam
Statue of Cristo Redentor (in Rio de Janeiro)
Golden Gate Bridge
Gateway Arch (St. Louis)
St. Peter’s Basilica
Mount Rushmore
St. Basil’s Cathedral (Moscow)
Big Ben

The kids enjoyed the snow today.

Daughter got braces this week. She got them in cute blue and pink colors. When they come out, she will have had them for two years, which at that point will have been nearly twenty percent of her life.

Somebody on an online forum asked if High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography wasn’t “cheating” somehow. My response:

As for whether HDR is “cheating”: I’m sure the first time somebody picked up a digital camera, the film shooters thought it was “cheating.” The first time somebody picked up a Leica, the sheet film shooters thought it was “cheating.” The first time somebody picked up sheet film, the plate glass shooters thought it was “cheating.” The first time Niépce created an image with a chemically sensitized glass plate, the painters thought it was cheating.

So, we can see, all photography is cheating.

On our last day of the extended (two-week!) holiday break, Son and I spent some time on the couch together watching five episodes (two and a half hours) of the PBS show Travels to the Edge with Art Wolfe. It’s a documentary/travel show which follows renowned landscape and nature photographer Art Wolfe to exotic locations across the globe, as he photographs them.

It’s a great program for us to watch together, because it touches on both of our obsessions. Of course, my singular obsession is with photography, and it’s interesting to watch Wolfe carry his equipment to the far reaches of the globe, and to watch him as he interacts with people, wildlife, and the world around him.

Above: Art Wolfe travels to The Edge

Son is obsessed with geography. He sits in front of a wall map of the world and notices interesting facts (“Did you know there is a river called Ob?” It’s in Russia). He spends hours playing an online geography game. He asks us to name a country, so that he can reply with the continent it’s on. He asks us all kinds of obscure geography questions that we have no idea the answer to (“What country has no islands? What continent has the most countries?”). He writes lists of countries with their capitals … for fun.