A Little Lens Cleaning With ROR Lens Cleaner:
I never talk about lens cleaning because quite frankly, I don’t really do it much haha :). But for like the first time in my life, I was in need of something a little stronger than just my trusty microfiber cloth. I needed some sort of liquid help, and that’s how I found ROR Lens Cleaner.
I’m usually careful with my front element, and with the rare exception of a couple of lenses, I always use a filter. I know some just don’t like filters, and that’s totally fine. To each his/her own but honestly, I have never seen any drop in image quality when a high quality one is used. To me, the benefits far outweighs the negatives of going filterless. Accidents happen all the time, no matter how careful we are. That’s how I look at it.
Anyway, I was in a shoot one day, and I gave my camera to the model to review the images. My Leica SL2 with the Summilux-SL 50mm f1.4 ASPH is pretty heavy, so she accidentally placed the front of the lens right on her knee. This left a huge smudge mark.
Like I mentioned earlier, I rarely clean my lenses. I just don’t see a need too. I try to be careful. Plus, tiny debris and dust have never affected my image quality. I know how one can get obsessed with cleaning lenses, so I’d rather not do that to myself. I can make something worse sometimes by cleaning. For instance, the more I clean, the more chances arise of me actually scratching what I’m cleaning, for example or if I’m always blowing dust away, there might be more of a chance of dust actually getting in areas of the lens that I would have a lot of difficulty getting too.
But while dust and small debris may not affect my image quality, a big smudge from a knee print will :). I first attempted to gently wipe it away with a clean (brand new) microfiber cloth but while it did help some, it unfortunately just move a lot of it around.
So, I was looking around to find liquid lens cleaner, which I really didn’t want to use. It’s just for me, I don’t like putting anything on any of my glass in general even if it’s just a filter like in this case (I had a protective filter in front of my Lux). Keep in mind though that while this is just a filter, it is multi-coated, and it costs about $400. That costs more than some lenses, so I still wanted to be careful.
So, I looked for a quality lens cleaning liquid, and came across quite a few. There’s really a lot of great stuff out there these days but in the end, I decided to give ROR Lens Cleaner a try. I heard a lot of people had experience with it.
Here’s what I basically did: I used a Giottos Rocket Blaster to get dust particles off. I used a brand new micro fiber cloth, and sprayed just a little of the ROR liquid on it. A small amount is key here; I barely used one squirt from the bottle. I gently wiped in circular motions from the center of the lens to out, and quite frankly, I was amazed at how well this stuff works. The smudge stain was huge, and it didn’t take any effort at all to get rid of it. The filter looks completely brand new!
Like I said, there are a lot of great liquids for cleaning lenses out there, and I think some people even make their own. But the ROR Lens Cleaner cost me $8 for 2 oz, which will basically last me till the end of time lol. There is also a 1 oz version for $4.50, which is probably what I should’ve bought. I know it’s super safe on my delicate multi-coated lenses and filters, so in the end, it’s not much of an investment considering the peace of mind I’m getting knowing it’s safe to use on my expensive glass. Plus, according to the company, you can clean other things like LCD screens, flat-panel TV’s, cell-phones iPods, etc.
Anyway, this wasn’t a review or anything but I wrote this just in case some of you needed the info. The ROR stuff worked like magic but I still won’t be doing any cleaning unless it’s absolutely necessary. For me, I feel that’s the best approach to cleaning my photographic gear in general. But for those cases where cleaning is absolutely necessary, this is what I’ll be doing.
