Today I cleaned the CCD of my Fuji S2 Pro. I was annoyed by the same spot on every picture. At first I thought my Nikon 28-105 was the suspect. So I shot this image:
But both the 28-105 and my Tamron 90/2.8 gave the same image, obviously the spots where CCD-related and not lens-related.
The procedure for cleaning the CCD is simple, but…you need to take precautions. First you need to be in a clean room. Second, the camera need not be used recently. Third, you need to hook up the camera to AC-adapter. And fourth, you need special swabs and cleaning fluid. The second precaution was a simple one: the camera was used this afternoon, not recently. The first one, well, if I consider my computer room clean, then this condition is met too. Third condition was a difficult one: I don’t have an AC-adapter for my camera. Fourth condition, well, none of that present here too.
I thought, what the heck, let me just look at the CCD and try to blow of the dust. Pressing the Flash-settings and LCD-light button whilst turnin on the camera was the first step. I removed the lens, pressed the shutter, and the mirror stayed up. A nice redish CCD was looking at me, rather innocent, but with one big dustspot on it. I blew (no canned air, just my lungpressure) into the camera, to find that it would not remove the dustspot.
Scratch, scratch. Wait, I’ll get some Q-tips.
After removing the spot, the CCD-image looked like this:
So, I followed the procedure to flip up the mirror again and wiped the whole CCD area, no matter if I saw dust or not. The resulting image:
Clean enough for me!
DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT THE PREFERRED WAY OF CLEANING THE FUJI S2 PRO CCD. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGE TO YOUR CCD IF YOU FOLLOW THIS PROCEDURE. SCRATCHING THE SURFACE OR AN OTHERWISE MALFUNCTIONING CCD MIGHT BE THE RESULT IF YOU FOLLOW THIS PROCEDURE. DO NOT TRY THIS CHEAP PROCEDURE IF YOU CAN NOT AFFORD A NEW CCD WHEN THINGS GO WRONG.