Lighter Fluid for Cleaning (04) - a photo on Flickriver

            Lighter Fluid is one of the most used and best working cleaning agents in camera service and repair.

My favorite choice for years is the one on from a big German drugstore chain (DM Markt) and it was both very very clean and cheap. Last year DM decided to spoil my fun and stopped selling it. Grrrrr :-(
Luckily (because i had downloaded their Safety Sheet earlier) i knew that Centralin did produce that good stuff. Centralin is online available for me so i ordered some 125ml tins which arrived today.

So it is Testing Time !

Test ground is the bottom of an all black Canon A35F. That satin black surface is just the ideal testplatform as you can see almost anything on that  :-)

First thing to check out is the cleaning ability.  Canon's bottom was smeared evenly with a thin coat of Kerensky's Secret Formula Grease. The bottom was divided in 4 areas for DM, Centralin, Zippo and Coleman Fuel.

I used a separate Q-tip drenched with a drop of the specific cleaning agent for each area. The other, dry end, of the Q-tip was used for mopping up.
.
.
Here the result of the Spread, Dry and Residue test.

A droplet of each cleaning agent was applied on the horizontally placed bottom of the poor Canon and left to dry.  
This was by no means easy as getting about the same size droplets proved to be hard. In the end i used a small oil pin and received satisfactory results. 

The DM and Centralin Lighter Fluids did spread out and dry fast and left  almost no residue as proven by the faint circles. 

Zippo Lighter Fluid also did spread out and dry fast but left a tiny thicker circle which is btw almost perfectly round.

The Coleman Fuel behaved less. Drying took longer and the circle it left is both thicker compared to the Lighter Fluids but also much more jagged.

As can be imagined i felt a bit dizzy after testing all this volatile stuff ;-)  Nevertheless the test results are clear for me. Centralin will be my choice for the next years.

Of course it is in the economical sense wise to use another, (much) cheaper cleaner for a first treatment and top that off with a really good one. 

btw All the fuzzy white specks you see here are just reflections of light streaming through a white paper towel behind the camera. Should have taken a more plain towel then that bubbly one.

Taken on: April 15, 2015

Tags:

Cleaning

Cameras

Service

Naphtha

Lighter

Fluid

Agent

Proffisimo

Centralin

Zippo

Coleman

Fuel

Test

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Sets appears in: • Lighter Fluid for Cleaning

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