This week I had it out with my 10 year old Canon DSLR. The camera won. I was forced to clean the sensor which because I had a camera that said it had “auto sensor cleaning” I didn’t think I had to do it.
Well, after ten years, no automatic sensor cleaner is going to get the job done. So, I whined and ordered the wrong stuff thinking it was the right stuff but finally ordered the right stuff.
The actual clean took me all of fifteen minutes.
Since I’ve been using my 180mm macro lens, any dust on the sensor shows up on these photos and I had been spending plenty of time post shooting, “cleaning” them up.
Now, with a dust free sensor, and no, as in zero, post shoot work to do, I am truly amazed I did not do this earlier. I’m keeping a list of these amazements and they are mounting up.
In doing this and by insisting that the 180mm lens is THE only lens for me at this point in my life, I realized that selective focus is truly the essence of macro photography and is also the only true survival skill I have.
I prefer garden photos that are blurred around one very sharp flower or petal or variegation in a leaf. It is the same skill I apply to news of the outside world. I listen but selectively. And, each day, I am doing mandatory deep breaths at some latest number of rising COVID cases and spectacular ineptitude in leadership in my country. I feel sure human beings are going to have to be reclassified lower on the evolutionary scale after this performance.
I stop the cauldron of anger, fear, and dread by paying attention to something else. This week I started each morning with my garden and my newly cleaned sensor and 180mm lens.
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