 So have you ever wondered how to clean the lens of your camera? Well, in this lesson, we're going to talk about it. Lenses get dirty. It's just a fact of life. So we're going to try to clean up this very dirty lens on my Nikon here. So I'm going to start by picking up the camera. And you can see here that it's got a sun shield on it and lots of other stuff. I'm going to pick it up and push the camera release here, and you can see I'm sliding off the lens. Just flip it like that. And you can see I'm putting it face down. I can do that because the glass is not touching the tabletop or anything like that. And I'm going to start by putting some caps on things. First, I'm going to put a cap on the body of the camera so that no dust or dirt gets inside. That's very important. Make sure you use that cap. I'm going to put that to the side. You can see I also put a cap on the top. That's just to keep any dust from falling on top of the lens. Now I'm just turning it around there. You can see I was just trying to see how to take off that sun shield right there. I'm going to put that to the side. You can see it's got a cap on one end of the lens. And I'm going to put the other cap back on the other end. Now to do this, we're going to need a few things. We're going to need lens cleaner. We're going to need a cleaning cloth for a lens. And you're going to need a body cloth. So you can see that they're basically the same thing. I use one to clean off the body of the lens and one for the glass. And I keep them separate. You can also see my little blower brush right there, which kind of puffs air onto the lens. And it works as a brush. See, I've got some optical cleaning paper right there. And over to the side, you can also see some Q-tips there. Now I'm going to start with the shield. I'm going to start with the sun shield. I'm just going to clean that off. And this is simple, super simple stuff. Not a very big deal. And really most people don't do this. But I'm doing a sort of professional total clean up job on this lens. So wipe that off really quick. And I've got actually a harder brush that's kind of better at getting sort of stuck on dirt. I pulled that from my little kit in the back underneath the table there. See, I brushed off the table because there was quite a bit of dust falling off of it. So I've got that taken care of. Now I'm going to take my body cloth, the sort of lens cloth that is a little bit older and dirtier. And I'm just going to put some cleaning fluid on there. And I'm just going to wipe it off. So this only gets got really dirty because it was stored outside for a very long time. It was very dusty and dirty and kind of covered in grime. I don't think it had ever been cleaned. You don't have to clean things like sun shields. And the outsides of your lens is very often. But you're going to see me doing it in this video just as an example. And because the lens that I'm holding in this video is also pretty dirty in general. So there you go. You can see it kind of even looks a little shinier in the video. So I'm going to put that to the side. And now it's time for the lens. I'm going to make a little space for myself here. You can see me moving everything to the side. I like to have a lot of space when I work on projects. So put those aside. You can see that little brush was getting away from me for a second. And I'm going to start by cleaning the body. So I'm going to need my body brush, which is you can see that brush on the table is got really hard bristles. It's not going to be anything that I'm ever going to touch to glass. But I'm going to start this entire little project by cleaning out the lens cap. Because that's actually a spot that a lot of dust and dirt will collect. And that can have long term effects on you're taking this little cap on and off and it'll sprinkle dirt and dust onto your lens. So it's a good idea to clean it off. So here you can see me cleaning that off. I've got my little other brush. But that's that brush that I just put down in the bottom left of the video there. That is actually a lens brush that I use pretty much just for lenses and mirrors and things that are a little bit more delicate. And that little brush that I'm sitting in the middle of the table is more for kind of the rougher stuff, the outsides of the barrels of the lens or the lens cap you can see here when I'm cleaning the body. Now I've got that body cloth there that I've put a little bit of lens cleaning fluid on. And I'm washing that off, rubbing off all of the dirt and oil and all that kind of stuff. Now we've got our back body cap here. You can see I put it down on its face, the lens. And I did that I would never put on the side that has the mount. I always put it on face down. You don't want to do this with fisheye lenses and things like that, especially with wide angle lenses. You want to be careful. But with this lens you can be careful. You don't have to be so careful because the glass doesn't stick out. Now I'm going to start cleaning this lens by getting the really sort of the broader things that get kind of the biggest pieces of dirt on them. And that would be the body of the lens. Because I'm not getting a whole lot of garbage on the glass. I really am very careful about that. So I'm starting with all the sort of cracks and crevices around the outside. You can see I've got kind of pointing out the spots where the contacts on the mount. And I pointed out earlier the barrel. Also the front right around the lens, there's like a little some threads that you can kind of see that are for the filters and things like that. And I'll start right now with those or actually I won't start with those. I'm going to clean the outside of the barrel here. Actually, sorry about that. I think I was pointing out earlier that they were pretty clean already. So I'm taking the brush and I'm just wiping off the little. This lens has some sort of perforations that you use for the grip. This is for focusing and selecting your focal length. And I'm just going around and wiping those off. I'm going to extend the lens out to its longest length. And I'm going to get the barrel right there. You can see there's some spots where dust is collected on the barrel. And you always want to watch that spot on a lens. We've talked about this for the point in shoots and maybe even for some of the other videos. But dust will collect on that barrel. And you want to make sure that you're getting that off. So now it's time to use the body cloth on this one. And I've just put a little bit of lens cleaning fluid on there. And I'm just kind of going around and getting all the dirt and oil off of the lens. Now these things spend a lot of time in our hands. And if you know anything about hands, you know that hands are pretty dirty. So it's a good idea every once in a while, not too often. But every once in a while to clean off your lens. And you can see here I've actually found a piece, what looked like some honey that was stuck on this lens. I'm not exactly sure. It's not a lens that I've ever really used before. I cleaned it. So I wasn't exactly sure where that came from. Usually if there's something sticking to my lens, I usually know where it came from. Now you can see I'm pointing again to the rings. And those are filter rings. You can actually screw a filter onto the front of your lens, which is something I would really recommend. This lens doesn't have one yet. But it's going to get one soon. And you can see me just going around. I'm not touching the glass. I'm not doing my best to avoid touching the glass. And trying to keep things actually too from falling onto it. So you can see I'm holding it to its side. And you just go around and sort of brush those out. Sometimes when you're working, you'll get a little bit of dirt or grit inside of those. And that will make screwing lenses on and off a little bit hard so you want to make sure that you keep those things clean. And you also want to make sure that you don't bend or break them when you're using the camera in general. Now we're going to move to the front element. We're going to start with our little blower brush here. And you can see that I'm just using some air to blow any sort of abrasive materials off. Now I'm going to put the brush part back on. And you can see I rubbed it on my hand. You actually want to keep your avoid doing that kind of thing. I was doing it to demonstrate that it is a soft brush. I had just washed my hands so there was no oil on my hands. But if you get any oil on that brush, you're going to then paint that right onto your lens. And you want to not do that. So I am demonstrating right there my lens cloth. And that lens cloth, I actually just used that for when I'm traveling and I get something on it. I always have that lens cloth with me. So say I'm taking photos of maybe a protest or something like that. And it's raining on that day. I'll make sure always that I have that lens cloth with me so that I can wipe off my lens if it gets wet. But in general, for actually cleaning the lens, I usually stick to optical paper, which you see me crumpling up right there. And I'm just going to take a little drop of cleaning fluid and put it on there. And I'm going to carefully, very carefully, just dab it on and in a circular motion rub off the lens. You can see I'm just kind of starting from the middle and sort of working my way out. And I was trying to open up my hand so that you could see what I was doing. But in the end, I ended up being too hard to hold the paper. So now I'm going to go do this again and again because this lens was very dirty. So I'm going to go again. And the lens was actually quite wet, so I didn't need to reapply any lens cleaning fluid. And you can do this with the cloth. Like I said, the cloth that's crumpled up down there in the bottom right corner of the video. But I use paper because it just is a little bit more of a guarantee that you're not going to scratch anything. Now, you can see me using the brush to sort of remove a little bit of dust. And the room that I was in had a little bit of dust in the air, which kind of was making a little bit of a fight a fight against nature. So one thing you can always do is wait for a human time of day to do this so that all your dust is gone. I happen to just be doing it in the middle of day. And our house is across from a construction zone. So there was lots of dust and dirt in the air. But here you can see me continuing to kind of work my way around the lens. And I'm doing everything very carefully, very fine touch. But there you go. It's basically done now. And at this point, generally, I would put on a filter. This lens doesn't have a filter yet. I hadn't run to the camera shop to buy one. So I would normally be putting a filter on the front of that lens, but I didn't. So just keep that in mind. It's a great way to protect your lens from any future dirt and grime and damage. And it's a great way to reduce the amount of time you have to spend cleaning your lens, because you don't have to be as careful with filters, I find. All right, so you can see me up. I've flipped the lens here. And it's on its front, sitting on the table, and I'm just cleaning the mount right now. So I started and I brushed it off with the sort of body brush. And then with the body cloth, I went around and sort of cleaned off anything that could get in the way. I also can see me out with the brush there, cleaning around the glass. There's a little piece of glass right at the very top of that. And now I've pulled a Q-tip to clean the contacts. You can see that little row of dots on the very little black bit right there that I'm touching with the Q-tip. Those are contacts for electrical contacts that connect the lens and the camera. And so those are basically the telephone wires that connect and allow the communication between the lens and the camera. So you can see here that I've also found another spot right there next to the focus ring. You can see there's a little spot where I can switch between manual autofocus and I clean that. Now you can see I didn't actually clean the back element of this camera. And you might be wondering, well, why not? Well, there was no dirt there. So one of the great ways to protect your lens is not to clean it. Sometimes the best thing you can do is not clean your lens when it is not dirty because cleaning your lens wears on it. It adds to the number of scratches and things like that on your glass. And you don't want that. So the best way to protect your lens is to not clean it too often, but when you do, to clean it well. And after you've cleaned it, to put a filter on it. So that was your lesson on cleaning a lens. I hope you enjoyed it. And come on back and check out more videos for this course.