Canon® EOS Digital Photography Photo Workshop

10.1. KNOWING AND AVOIDING THE FIVE THINGS THAT DAMAGE YOUR CAMERA GEAR

As I've traveled the world with a digital camera, I've experienced everything from dropping a Canon f/2.8 24-70mm L-series lens onto the cement in a Buddhist temple in a small Chinese village to having a wad of sand land onto my EOS-1D Mark II when it was spit out by a four-wheeler in the Saudi Arabian desert. I've learned to prepare for the unexpected, and I've learned how to manage it when it happens.

While sometimes unavoidable — especially if you work outside of a studio — the five most-evil enemies of digital cameras are ones you'll want to know how to combat and prevent. These various adversaries of photography can affect your camera in a variety of ways, which I cover in each description.

10.1.1. DUST, SAND, AND DIRT

Dust is everywhere, and at some point you're bound to get some of it in your dSLR no matter how perfectly you keep it. Somehow, this pesky stuff just has a way of creeping into your camera and making a beeline for your CMOS sensor, and then appearing where you want it least in your favorite new images. Dust, however, isn't particularly damaging other than it mars an image to the point that you'll need to clean the sensor and then use your image-editing software to get spots out of your photo.

Sand and dirt, conversely, have a harder time getting into your gear because the particles are physically larger than a piece of dust. But if a particle (or more!) does get into your camera, it can ...