What’s your preferred cleaning method? (1 Viewer)

[GrampaTom]

So you pop your bins on the shelf while you open the hide window and find they have splodged in someone's unidentified lunch detritus. You then whip out your blower, your small bottles of chemicals and your cotton buds that you carry on you at all times? Or do you just wipe out the crud with your finger, breathe gently on the lens and wipe it with a random bit of clean cloth and maybe remember to give it a clean with the lens cloth it came with when you get back to the car and put the bins back in their case?

Don’t do hide windows. Am very careful to avoid someone’s lunch detritus, my own sweat, drool, rain and snow. I used to clean the splodges from my eyeglasses with my necktie while at work. Getting new lens, wondering at how clear and clean everything looked it wasn’t till I looked at the mini scratches on my old eyeglass lens that I knew the new and improved vision wasn’t just the new prescription. In forty years my Bino lens have never seen a shirt tail. It’s not hard. Besides I hated messing up my neckties.

 

[Bino Steve]

Less cleaning is better. Don't wipe constantly after every use or every time you see a tiny smidgen. Unless it spoils your view, like mud etc. Let minor smudges and dust build up a bit before attacking. Then clean properly as noted above or by your Mfg. We can't see minor dirt, dust haze that we'll, it's too close to your face, you can't focus on it, you are focusing on a bird etc 100+ ft away. Don't believe me, try this. Next rain, find a window that got splattered with drops. Not fully running with water but spotted after rain has stopped. Sit next to window and view something out in your yard. Guess what, no rain drops in your view. So, don't clean too much.

 

[PW42]

Swarovski Curio manual recommends lens brush then breath on surface and clean with soft moist cloth. The use of the provided micro fibre cloth appears to be for less thorough cleaning although the manual is far from clear on that. I assume they would recommend the same procedure for all their binos.

 

[Binocollector]

Air Blower Brush + a (clean) micro-fiber cloth.

(also avoid cleaning too often)

That's what I do.
Modern coatings are tougher than old ones however, so I am guilty of the occasional "blow away dust, then wipe with t-shirt". But definitely not on my vintage treasures.

 

[Tringa45]

The staff members are joking here? I certainly hope so!
One shouldn't need to clean one's bins in the field and for the rare event that a teardrop gets on an ocular I have a fresh lens cleaning tissue available.

John

 

[Hermann]

One shouldn't need to clean one's bins in the field and for the rare event that a teardrop gets on an ocular I have a fresh lens cleaning tissue available.

Depends on the circumstances and the way you're birding. If you go out in all sorts of weather you often can't avoid cleaning your binoculars and/or scope in the field. I often used water from my waterbottle to get sand and saltspray off my optics when birding in rough weather at the coast or on Helgoland for instance. And that works just fine.

Hermann

 

[Mike Crawley]

I think if you regularly get out birding in rough weather it’s inevitable that some cleaning is required "in the field".

Wind blown sea/salt spray on objective lenses while on a low level/beach sea-watch
Dusty deposits in southern France/Spain while late afternoon birding
Snow on a winter birding walk.

All require some attention when convenient

 

[Tringa45]

Wind blown sea/salt spray on objective lenses while on a low level/beach sea-watch
Dusty deposits in southern France/Spain while late afternoon birding

Well, unless you do as Hermann suggests, cleaning in those situations is a recipe for disaster.
Many forget or are unaware that the thickness of the coatings (often 1/4 wavelength) is a small fraction of a thousandth of a millimeter.

John

 

[Mike Crawley]

crikey, tringa, I don’t have at them with a wire brush !!!
I my tiny mind "sluice off with clear water and act appropriately thereafter" was implied

 

[Tringa45]

crikey, tringa, I don’t have at them with a wire brush !!!
I my tiny mind "sluice off with clear water and act appropriately thereafter" was implied

The trouble with such threads is that everyone has something to contribute (and they also get the most clicks) so novices could be misled into adopting potentially harmful practices.
I'm sure Bill Cook, who has repaired tens of thousands of binoculars could cite a dozen harmless methods, but only very few harmful ones.
The wire brush method though was new to me and very creative.

John

 

[Thotmosis]

Depends on the circumstances and the way you're birding. If you go out in all sorts of weather you often can't avoid cleaning your binoculars and/or scope in the field. I often used water from my waterbottle to get sand and saltspray off my optics when birding in rough weather at the coast or on Helgoland for instance. And that works just fine.

Hermann

I agree and do likewise also it's very important to rinse the inside of the lens en objective covers after birding on the beach or desert, especially when they are made made of rubber. Sand gets stuck there and instead of protecting your lenses they become coating killers...

 

[Sebzwo]

I try to avoid cleaning it often but have those Zeiss branded wet wiping pads.
This time I went to La Palma Island, Canary Islands, looking at the new volcano and there is a lot of bad lava dust blowing around containing sulfur and phosphor and other acid stuff. That must be quite a pain to those super mountain top observatories located there.

 

[WJC]

I don't think I have ever seen a question about cleaning optics without it being immediately followed by a list of special products, techniques, and quotes from sacred members of the industry. If you look at the last two pages, two things will jump out at you. First, that everybody has their own free or expensive formula for doing the job. This just confuses the novice’s novice. Some of these formulae come in 2-ounce bottles, and when the cost per gallon is figured in, it becomes plan that this is making the manufacturer a fortune! The saddest part is that most of these wonder chemicals are just permutations of the time-honored formula presented in the attached.

“Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” — Theodore Roosevelt

 

[LucaPCP]

I try to avoid rubbing as much as possible. Generally I first rinse away any dust etc under a gentle stream of tap water. Then, I touch a bar of soap with a clean finger and very gently coat the lens with soap. Another rinse, then I shake the water off, and with the edges of a paper towel I absorb the occasional droplet of water at the edge of the lens. Then I let open to dry for a few hours.

 

[WJC]

See?