Dust Patrol DSLR-Brush for DSLR Sensor Cleaning Review
Dust Patrol are rather a newcomer to the DSLR sensor cleaning industry. Indeed, their domain http://www.thedustpatrol.com was registered on 28/Jul/06.
Actually having researched DSLR sensor cleaning quite extensively I was suprised to see their DSLR-Brush listed at http://www.micro-tools.com when I made this order. It seemed a bit much to have to pay 98 euros for a Visible Dust http://www.visibledust.com/ Sensor Brush kit for 1.6x DSLR sensors even though it included a two 16mm brushes with the second brush being "fan" style. Anyway I only wanted one brush and The Dust Patrol's was only 24 euro, which is still quite a lot for a brush but anyway.
So here we can see the packet it comes in.
The brush is inside a cellophane wrapper and then inside a useful carrying tube. There is also included 3 chamber swabs which are from the same company and also sold seperately in packets of 10.
Well its hard to get very excited over a brush!! It looks to be of quality construction. The brush is noted to be made in Germany and the kit is assembled in USA. There was a few specks of dust actually inside the packaging but this is not really of concern with the brush being part of a cleaning kit.
Actually the most important concern for a DSLR sensor cleaning brush is that the fibres are clean and without any glue or such contaminants. It is important to test any new brush on a clean UV filter before actually using it on the sensor. You want to see no streaks on the UV filter otherwise you must clean the brush before using it on the sensor. If you contaminate the sensor with grease or glue it will be rather difficult to wet clean it off but not impossible.
The brush fibres are very fine and soft. It was found to be a satisfactory and useful product. I believe it is important to have a brush in the sensor cleaning kit because you really dont need to wet clean a DSLR sensor unless it is necessary. So try with a brush first and then see if wet cleaning is required.
The way you use the brush is to blow air on the fibres in order to give them static electricity. It is not recommended to use compressed air because some cans can spray small amounts of oil also. The best thing to use is a giotto's rocket or similar powerful hand blower. So you energise the brush, make one pass over the sensor and then blow the brush again and make another pass if you like. It works for me quite well but if you have any stuck particles of dust on the sensor then you will need to do wet cleaning as the brush will only remove dust particles that are not stuck.
