How to Clean a Video Camera Lens

Cleaning the lens of your video camera is an important part of camera maintenance. You should clean the lens periodically to make sure that the quality of the video you are shooting is as good as it can be. While it is not difficult clean a lens correctly, if you don't follow certain steps you can easily cause permanently damage your expensive lens.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Blower brush or canned air duster
• Clean lens cleaning cloth
• Lens cleaning liquid (for grease and other sticky substances)

1. Remove the lens guard if your camera has one.

2. Blow any loose dust off the lens using the blow brush or canned air duster.

3. Brush off any remaining loose dust using the blow brush.

4. Gently wipe the lens with the lens-cleaning cloth.

5. If this has not removed all the debris on the lens, put a couple of drops of lens-cleaning liquid on the cloth and again gently wipe the lens.

Tips & Warnings

• You can buy a UV lens filter for many cameras which will protect the lens from dust and dirt. In the event that you scratch the filter while cleaning it, the filter is much cheaper to replace than the lens. The lens-cleaning materials listed above are available at almost any photo or video store.
• Do not use the cloth before blowing off the dust from the lens. This can scratch the lens. Do not press down with the brush or cloth. Clean your lens only when it is dirty. Over-cleaning can wear down the protective finish on the surface of the lens.

References

• How to Clean a Camera Lens
• How to Clean your DSLR camera lens