Unpopular opinion: stop using canned air on shutter curtains

I keep seeing folks blast dust off their focal plane shutters with canned air. In my experience, that's a fast way to bend a curtain or blow debris deeper into the mechanism. Last month a guy brought in a Nikon F2 where the shutter was dragging, and sure enough, a piece of grit was lodged behind the curtain from exactly this. I use a rubber bulb blower and a soft brush instead, it takes more time but saves you a repair down the line. Has anyone else seen damage from this, or am I being too cautious?

3 comments

3 Comments

johnson.jason14d ago

Yeah that's just how people rush through everything these days...

patricia_schmidt1414d ago

Rushing isn't the issue, canned air just pushes dust deeper instead of removing it.

blake69113d ago

Man @patricia_schmidt14 is spot on though. All canned air does is relocate the dust to the worst possible spot inside your PC. It's like sweeping dirt under the rug and calling the floor clean. People see that little white cloud shoot out and think they're done but really they just buried the problem deeper. Compressed air is fine for some stuff but you need to actually get dusty components out and wipe them down. I've seen too many friends with sticky fans and overheating CPUs because they thought blasting dust deeper into the fins was the same as cleaning.