Dirty Lens?

Gopherkid

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So I just recieved my 70-200 f4 and had my first test run with it this weekend. Went out to the dirt track with my friends to shoot them riding. Problem is that the track was super dry, so there was no shortage of dust clouds. ATV's made the problem even worse, where I gave up shooting mid day. I was using a filter to keep dirt and grime away from my glass, and made sure never to detatch the lens from the body. But now im paranoid some grime got into the manual focusing ring, it seems like it sounds different. I know air in a can, and a blow gun from a air compressor are out of the question. Am i SOL?
 
Is it grinding? If not then leave it. Paranoia will only make you leave your gear at home, and injecting compressed air into calibrated precision gear is never a good idea.

I have a piece of sand stuck under the focusing ring on my macro. Been there since the early 2007 unigames volleyball tournament, lens camera et al, unaffected.
 
Be aware compressed air can blow the dirt farther into the mechanism causing the focusing ring to lockup.
 
Ive worked grains out by holding the lens towards the graound and, worked it back and, forth.
 
I was thinking about the covers too. But i also did realize when i purchased all this stuff that i intended to take pictures of dirtbikes..... and so on dry days, air born dirt is just part of the game. I know not to use compressed air of any kind. The noise is not terrible by any means, and its not any harder to focus, but you can still tell theres a small amount in there. I did Joves idea, and that seemed to help quite a bit.
 
Obsessing about stuff like this is bad bad bad... I had to have my D300 pretty thoroughly cleaned by a pro today because I made a mess of it... all starting from "oh gee,theres a spot on my mirror... well, I'll just fix that right up... oops!!! Well, I should be able to fix that... oops!!! Well, crap, I need to clean that off, I'll just try... OOOOOPSSS!!!"
 
Actually... manaheim has a point.... I had an L lens that had some dirt and stuff appear inside after several years of use. IIRC it only cost couple hundred to have it sent in for a cleaning.
 
I used to take my lenses apart and, clean them myself in the old days. But now I wouldnt even think of taking the newer lenses apart. Glad that helped you Gopher, I like to let gravity do most of the work.
 
I was just getting that new item paranoia..... Its hard not to be obsessive right after dropping that much cash.
 

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