April 6, 2014
Sea Stacks at Rialto Beach, Washington, and the eyelead Sensor Gel Stick

This image from Rialto Beach this past fall has been growing on me. I used a 6-stop solid ND (neutral density) filter to get a 4-minute exposure to smooth out the waves and soften the clouds and hopefully capture color throughout the sky as the sun set beyond a very small gap in the clouds. There was a just a hint of color on a small area of the clouds in the image, so I worked up this black-and-white version to make the image really sing.

eyelead Sensor Gel Stick

I was excited to try out the eyelead Sensor Gel Stick after watching this video by Moose Peterson. It finally arrived after being backordered, and let me tell you it's a great product! The device is a sticky tip on the end of a handle, and it does a great job of picking up specks of dust. The tip has a slight taper, so it's not possible to get dust right along the edge of a Canon full-frame sensor, but using it along with an Arctic Butterfly brush from Visible Dust to get the edges is a great combination. After you're done cleaning the sensor, you clean the tip of the Sensor Gel Stick on a sticky cleaning paper. There are 10 strips of cleaning paper included, and it's possible to use the same strip of cleaning paper four times, or more if you're really careful, by using different parts of it and then covering it up with the protective backing. You can order an eyelead Sensor Gel Stick, and additional cleaning papers, from Photography Life. Note that the eyelead Sensor Gel Stick is not compatible with the sensors used on most Sony mirrorless cameras, and the list of cameras that are not compatible are given on the Photography Life order page.