During my recent photo-expedition in Bhutan, while immersed in photographing the festival of Prakhar, totally focused on the whirling dancing monks of the monastery, and crouching to capture their movements, disaster struck one of the expedition’s participants. Her Canon 20D wouldn’t work...it just froze. Nothing worked. Removing and replacing the battery didn’t work. Replacing the CF card with another one didn’t work. Nothing. Suddenly an epiphany! I removed the lens from the camera, and with a corner from my t-shirt carefully wiped the contacts on the lens mount and those on the camera. Presto! The camera worked again. Gunk had prevented the electronics to connect properly….but I knew that my wiping would not be sufficient if we were to prevent that problem from happening again during our coming many photo shoots. None of us had alcohol-based cleaner, so we wiped down the connections on our lenses and cameras, and hoped for the best.
Back at our hotel in Bumthang, I noticed that one of us had a bottle of Smirnoff Vodka (just for medicinal use of course). Another epiphany! A few drops of the liquid on a lint-free cloth proved to be an excellent cleaner of electronic connections on our cameras’ mounts. Needless to say, our cameras worked perfectly for the remainder of the expedition. James Bond may disapprove, but you can try this at home if you like…just don’t get vodka on the camera’s sensor!
