So last night I broke down and did the most potentially damaging thing I could do to my beloved Nikon D70: I cleaned the CMOS sensor. Like a loving parent who has to discipline their disobedient child, I had to self clean my work horse Nikon.

After a week of taking awesome pictures of the gorgeous Lake Tahoe before my Nikkor DX lens and viewing the end result with two very small pieces of fiber in every picture, I broke down and pulled the DIY clean job.

I didn’t have the right tools, as defined by Nick’s excellent how-to site as I’ve previously mentioned on my site, but hey, you work with what you got, right? Outside of the evil Q-Tip, I did at least use the proper fluid for cleaning the sensor. After lightly blowing air into my DSLR to remove the Q-Tip’s fiber “hairs”, I slapped back on the DX lens and took a picture of a white piece of paper. I yanked the Lexar 1 GB WA CF card and put it into my PC’s multi-card reader. I viewed the snow white image and gone was my spots! Yes, it worked!! I couldn’t be happier. I basically saved about a $100 cleaning fee and two weeks without my digital pal. If you have the guts, the know-how, and can follow Nick’s directions to a D (as in DSLR ;) ), then you’ll do just fine, too!