Sparkling glass

6 lens cleaners for spotless shots

Camkix Lens Cleaning Paper Tissue & Double Sided Cleaning Cloth

From £6.20/$7.30 www.amazon.co.uk T

issue paper doesn’t immediately spring to mind when you’re thinking of ways to clean your lenses – but that’s exactly what you get in this kit, along with a 16cm-square microfibre cleaning cloth. The theory goes that you use a sheet of tissue paper to pick up loose dust and lint, then follow up with the microfibre cloth to clean away any excess residue and smears the tissue paper sheet didn’t catch initially.

It may seem strange, but the system actually works. The paper sheet does a pretty good job of removing oils even without the cloth for backup, though neither quite leaves the same spotless finish as a wet cleaning system. The combo also consumes more kit bag space than a few handy Zeiss wipes.

Camkix offers the kit with 300 papers and a single microfibre cloth; with 550 papers and two cloths; or with 800 papers and three cloths. The latter is still slightly less expensive than 200 Zeiss wipes, but you’ll need to clean your lenses very frequently for the added quantity to be more useful than the extra speed and convenience of wet wipes.

PROS Cost-effective; cleans loose dust and light smears quite well in most instances

CONS Won’t quite get rid of oily residue – you’ll need wet wipes, or a spray and microfibre cloth

Eco-fused Microfibre Cleaning Cloths £5.50/$7 www.amazon.co.uk

Microfibre cloths are the go-to cleaning product of choice for many photographers. They’re great for cleaning not just lenses, but also your camera’s LCD screen, as well as filters, phone and tablet screens.

These Eco-fused cloths use an especially tight weave, so they’re better suited to cleaning fine dust and smears. The slick fabric also resists picking up dirt and debris while stored in your kit bag. Excessive dust on your lens is best blown away first, but otherwise the cloths clean well and remove most smudges and oily marks.

For a truly crystal-clear finish, however, they’re best paired with a specialist lens cleaning spray, like the Zeiss spray on test.

Each pack contains 10 18x15cm washable cloths, plus an extra pair of 14x8cm. We chose the black and grey ones, but blue cloths are available; and if you’re fed up with losing small items in your bag, go for the yellow and green pack.

PROS Cloths are a useful size and material; gives a decent clean; good value

CONS To work well, you ideally want to pair with a liquid cleaner

Giottos GTAA1900 Rocket Air Blower

From £13.50/$17 www.giottos.com

Squeezy blowers like this are a simple but effective way to remove loose dust and dirt from your lens. They’re equally useful for blowing dust off your camera’s image sensor, or even giving a dusty computer keyboard a quick spruce-up.

This particular blower works exactly as advertised, directing a powerful, focused jet of air right where it’s needed. The ‘rocket’-inspired design also lets you stand the blower up on its end so it won’t roll away.

It’s a pleasantly convenient system, and a quick and easy way to shift loose dust from your lens. Blowing with your own lungs will accomplish similar results for free, however – and, unlike the Rocket Air Blower, this method doesn’t consume any space in your kit bag.

High-pressure air also won’t do anything about smears and oils on your glass: you’ll need some wipes or a spray cleaner to hand if you’re hoping to shift these.

PROS Good at removing loose particles; fun design; suitable for other cleaning jobs

CONS Pricey next to cheaper and more versatile lens solutions; comparatively bulky

Lenspen NLP-1 £7/$8 www.lenspen.com

The basic Lenspen design has been around for many years. It now comes in various sizes to suit lenses from large DSLR optics, all the way down to tiny phone cameras. This NLP-1 variant is the original design, suitable for larger lenses. Its standout feature is its 12mm diameter tip. This has a slightly concave surface to follow the curvature of your lens’s front element, and is coated in carbon to enable it to remove grease and fingerprints without you having to resort to a liquid cleaner.

Amazingly, the system works. Lenses with lots of fingerprints will require around 10 seconds of wiping with the carbon tip to achieve a perfect finish, but more typically marked optics come up gleaming in just a few moments.

The carbon tip can be ‘recharged’ by simply rubbing it against the inside of its protective cover. It should also be good for around 500 cleans. The other end of the pen houses a retractable brush – very handy for an initial sweep if your lens happens to be particularly dusty.

PROS Gives great results with dry and oily contaminants; convenient kit bag size

CONS Not the fastest option for cleaning very smeared glass

Zeiss Lens Cleaning Spray £7/$7 www.zeiss.co.uk

When a simple microfibre cloth just isn’t enough to perform a perfect clean, try pairing it with a lens cleaning spray. There are many available, but if you’re going to trust a fluid on your prized optics, you can be fairly sure a spray from Zeiss will be a safe bet. You get two 120ml spray bottles in this pack, though capacity and bundle options may vary according to retailer.

Of course, a spray on its own isn’t much good, so you’ll need to combine it with a good microfibre cloth. With this combo, Zeiss’ spray works a treat. One or two squirts onto the cloth is enough to clean a larger-diameter front lens element, and the final result is flawless. No streaks and no residue left over from the spray itself.

The only downside is that even at a modest 120ml capacity, each bottle still manages to take up valuable space in those smaller kit bags. On top of that, we’re not overly keen about storing a bottle of liquid next to our sensitive, and expensive, electronics.

PROS Gives a superb clean when paired with a cloth; best used in a home studio

CONS Bulky and a potential leak risk on the go; requires a microfibre cloth to use

Zeiss Lens Cleaning Wipes £11/$15 www.zeiss.co.uk

You could clean your lenses with the tried-and-tested combo of a microfibre cloth and a specialist cleaning spray, but there’s a risk that the cloth will pick up dirt in your kit bag, while the spray takes up valuable space. These pre-moistened lens wipes, on the other hand, are extremely handy and portable. Each wipe comes in a small 5cm-square sealed sachet and unfolds to 15x12cm – just the right size for cleaning a front or rear lens element.

Right out of the pack we found our wipes to be slightly too moist, leaving some initial streaks on the lens due to excess fluid. However this does eventually evaporate to leave a clean, streak-free and crystal-clear finish. The wipes pick up dust particles effectively, though it’s advisable to first blow away excessive amounts of dust with a squeezy blower.

These wipes are also great value: each works out at around 5.5p/7.5¢ when you buy them as a box of 200.

PROS Super-convenient; gives a spotless clean; very cost-effective when purchased in bulk

CONS Streaks can take a little while to fade; wipes dry out quickly once opened