Canon designed a lens that sucks air to clean sensor | Hacker News Reader

Canon designed a lens that sucks air to clean sensor

petapixel.com

43 pointsricc22 comments

Lots of big companies let their engineers submit patent to their IP office for almost whatever they like in the hopes that some of it might be useful. The inventors are usually paid a small bonus if the idea gets filed. It’s the kind of thing we used to do to make a little extra cash when wages weren’t growing. Ideas are easy.

This seems like the kind of idea dreamed up over a coffee break.

The concept seems good, but the picture seems odd. For this to work, you'd either want to:

* Use fancy fluid dynamics, the way bagless vacuum cleaners do, where you separate clean and dirty air

* Have some kind of filter

Otherwise, you'll bring in more dust than you take out. I see neither of those in the patent picture, but the patent is in Japanese. Perhaps it's in the patent text. Or perhaps there's a third way I haven't thought of.

Thoughts? What's Canon doing here?

A self-cleaning camera would be neat!

Also, what happens if it rains? Most 'weather sealed' lenses and bodies go to great pains to put O-rings on everything and completely separate air inside the camera from air outside. I imagine that's a lot harder to do with this design.

Given that lens fungus seems to be caused by humid air, isn't there a risk that this design will effectively decrease the storage life of it in real-world conditions?

For non-weather sealed fixed lens cameras (bridge, point and shoot, smartphone), this might make sense. Cameras that are not supposed to be used in adverse environments are less likely to suck in crud. The image suggests otherwise, but it probably makes sense to prototype the idea at a larger scale and higher volumes.

I mean, the Lumix LX100 is famous for sucking in dust onto its sensor after couple years of use, even if all you do with it is take pictures at family events. I don't think you need to be using your equipment in a sawmill to have this issue.

I'm not saying it is a good idea. And I set my cynicism aside to not make a cynical speculation that Canon was pursuing the idea in order to make new versions of the same old optical formulas by adding features and increasing complexity. Part of that was that o-rings for weather sealing cost less than a buck and Pentax weather seals it's cheapest kit lenses and DSLR bodies (and those cheap bodies have "IBS"). But I wasn't making that comment.

As far as I've read, the LX100's zoom mechanism is the likely culprit. Air movement might mitigate that kind of problem. Instead of trying to keep all the dust out, manage it, and send it where it doesn't matter.

On the other hand, the LX100's dust problems might also be from manufacture process. That would correlate with the seeming inevitability of sensor dust no matter how it is used (just so long as it is used). I remember reading something about a Canon or Nikon body that had that had manufacturing dust (Maybe on LensRentals?).

Where the feature might make particular sense is a competitor to the Sony RX1R : Full frame fixed lens premium price.

Given that the current solutions (just vibrate the sensor) work pretty well in most cases and that the proposed solution adds quite a layer of complexity I doubt that this will find widespread adoption.

I still love that this would actually remove the dust from the body though. I never had a problem with the vibrating-sensor-solution, but it always bothers me that all the dust just gets moved around in the body without really being gone.

My experience of cleaning sensors by vibrating the sensor isn't great - I don't recall it shifting any visible spots of dust/debris. Perhaps it's more effective on some models, I imagine those with IBIS have the advantage here.

For me, swabbing the sensor (of my D500) a couple of times a year is the only solution.

Probably vibrating the sensor works with tiny invisible specks but I agree that swabbing is the only solution for those big enough to be visible in pictures. My previous camera (Canon 700D) survived about 2 years w/o swabbing because I was very careful when changing lenses. Once I got thoughtless while changing (left the body open for too long while it was windy), the sensor vibration never had a chance.

Before swabbing, consider blowing off the dust with a little squeezy blower.

The sensor-shake works better after you leave the camera in a low humidity ambient for a while.

> Given that the current solutions (just vibrate the sensor) work pretty well in most cases and that the proposed solution adds quite a layer of complexity I doubt that this will find widespread adoption.

Especially since making those motors more agile generally improves IBIS as well.

> ...but it always bothers me that all the dust just gets moved around in the body without really being gone.

You're meant to do the actual cleaning indoors in a place with relatively dust-free air.

If you have a bathroom with controllable ventilation, what you can do is turn the ventilation to low, then run the shower so hot the air fills with steam, then stop the shower and wait until the steam settles and the humidity is "safe" for your electronics. Then you will have really clean air. If you're super diligent, do it in your underwear, and bring your camera into the room in a closed ziploc bag before you start, so you can avoid opening the door at all.

That's an excellent method I hadn't considered.

> do it in your underwear

Or in the nude, if we're finally post-Victorian.

I'm getting a kick out of the image of getting spotted by a housemate while walking to the bathroom, fully nude with a DSLR.

"Hey asteli, whatcha doin?"

"Aaaah, cleaning the sensor. Yep. Definitely that."

> You're meant to do the actual cleaning indoors in a place with relatively dust-free air.

Well that's a disappointment. I was picturing a friend of mine who goes to burning man to take photos. Poof camera full of dust!

Maybe I just got lucky, but I never had a single speck of dust on my 10-11 year old Canon P450D's sensor (which I very recently sold).

I used to travel extensively with it, especially across Asia, swapping between the stock lens and a 270mm Sigma as needed.

I'm not a professional photographer, so obviously never used as much as one, but it still got plenty use.

Did I just get lucky?

My computer is always sucking in air, and is always filled with a layer of dust. Surely for this patent to work, my analogy has to break down somewhere, but where?

This looks like a great way to ingest air that contains dust and stick it to your sensor. Looks like a useless patent to pad the ol' portfolio.

By far the best and easiest way to clean a sensor is with a can of compressed air.

>with a can of compressed air

If your camera has an IBIS, I'd use a blower/brush instead. A blast of air from a can is way too violent and could damage the IBIS assembly.

...without any contaminants or propellant.

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