Before the various companies came on the market and started selling us all these fancy DSLR sensor cleaning products, the typical method of DSLR sensor cleaning was to shape a plastic/rubber spatula and then cover it will a pec-pad folded in a special way which would then be held tight on the spatula with a piece of sellotape.
This product is similar to the home modified spatula that we discussed above but it is already made at the right size for you to use. It is called a Sensor Wand and is available in the sizes of 14mm for around 1.6x sensors, 16mm for the larger DSLR sensors on cameras like the 1D and then 18mm for full frame.
I believe that this is a http://www.micro-tools.com product. It comes in the packet already wrapped with a pec-pad. I purchased this product as well as some sensor swabs because whilst i would like to see how well in comparison with the sensor swabs that this product works. Its only 6.66 euro and is resusable of course. The pec-pads are 10 euro for 100 and so combined with a 10 euro bottle of Eclipse it is obviously going to be the cheapest wet cleaning method.
In comparison the sensor swabs are about 5-6 euros each. 64 euros for a box of 12 from micro-tools and you get two sweeps with them. It is highly not recommended to use the sensor swab for more than one sweep on the same side because you are likely to re-contaminate the sensor and worse than before.
Actually a friend obtained a box of 12 sensor swabs for 50 euro in Netherlands from http://www.cameranu.nl/ so cheaper prices are out there. Its still a significant amount though if you consider that you might use 3 if the DSLR sensor was quite dirty and you wished to get it very clean.
So in the end if you require a cheap solution then the sensor wand and the pec-pads are going to be the cheapest choice. Personally I prefer the expensive sensor swabs to the pec-pad method and really they are much easier to use and successful quicker.
