Lens Cleaning

[Liu]

Seeing how there's a lot of experienced photographers here, I think it would be a good idea to seek advice here. I recently made my transition into dslr, after years w/ a P&S camera, and well, i've never really maintained lenses before.

Today, my girlfriend accidently nudged my elbow while I was taking off my lens cap, which caused me to touch the lens (serves me right not to use a filter, which i'll be getting soon.) Well, it caused an awful finger print. I searched online how to clean lenses, and they said to fog it up with your breathe and rub it with a microfiber. I did as told, but now there's some small rainbow streaks -- I was wondering if I damaged the lens? How do I remove these streaks? I'm without transportation right now until Friday to try cleaning fluid.

As always, any help appreciated.

[tinyblob]

hi liu,
don't worry too much about fingerprints and streaks. you'd be surprised what won't actually show up in photos .
a lot of photographers secretly clean there lenses with their sleeves, a lot don't clean them at all.
sometimes you just can't avoid getting lenses dirty:


personally i use a "LensPen", and an expensive microfibre cloth (for cleaning glasses, you see a lot of cheap, bad quality cloths intended for cameras, better off going to an opticians). you can get lens cleaning fluid, but i have no experience with it.

[blinking8s+]

i beat my gear up, but then again i am more into the photojournast trend and that's just part of the job it seems...it's not broke unless some gaff tape cant fix it

i wear a soft undershirt to clean my lenses...or have a tiger-cloth (super soft anti-static cloth thats used to clean negatives) in my bag...

[Joe[y]+]

i also wear a nice soft shirt when i'm out taking photos :P - nothing that sheds fibres - cause that's just plain annoying and i have to blow air onto the lens with a lens cleaning brush.

yes, sometimes you can't avoid to get stains at the lenses..!

As I am a regular customer at the optician (my glasses mostly seem to be deepfried ...) I also bought a special cloth there for lenscleaning

I never understood that lens-pen-principle, always had the idea that this might be more marketing than real stuff..

but don't be too frightened about some small spots etc. at the lenses:

if you manage to photograph through a wire-fence and you don't see the wire, so you will not see too much from some dirt

but, as always, prevoyance is the mother of china, porcelan, and so better use a simple filter as a protection

[Liu]

Thanks guys, your comments were very comforting.

I've continued shooting, and I can't tell any difference in the images as you guys have said.