Are all anti-static cloths created equal?

Nicholas Lindan

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Go to Costco and get a bale of 100 microfiber cloths for $13. A microfiber cloth is a microfiber cloth is a microfiber cloth.

"Anti-static" cloths are to be avoided. Many have been sprayed with a light coat of silicone oil at the factory. Get silicone oil on a lens surface and you will never get it off.

If you really have a staticy surface, like a CRT or expanse of plastic, then take an old Windex spray bottle, fill with distilled water and add two drops of dishwashing liquid. Spray on and wipe off. Again, keep lenses out of it. Or, you can pay $25 for 1/2 oz. of "Antistatic Gold Treatment" - which is just the same thing.
 

BAC1967

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I have been using the Ilford cloth for years now to gently wipe dust from my negatives, it works great. Never tried the Tetenal one.
 

BrianShaw

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Nicholas Lindan said:
Go to Costco and get a bale of 100 microfiber cloths for $13. A microfiber cloth is a microfiber cloth is a microfiber cloth.
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My local automatic car wash gives these to customers who pay for the "deluxe wash". They are great for the final drying of those hard-to-dry parts of the car and great for almost everything else too!
 

AgX

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Micro-Fibres are great for producing electristatic charge. Unless they are orginall specially treated or made damp with an antistatic compound.

"Anti-static" cloths for sure got no silicone oil embedded as such would be counterproductive to being anti-static. For the rest I assume them to have a rather similar composition concerning the the type of active substance.
 

George Collier

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I usePec-12 film cleaner, then the orange Ilford anti-static cloth, followed by a Giotto rocket blaster when scanning. The results are much better than I though they would be - most spotting, if any (even after sharpening) is mostly film defects. One question, though - how long does the orange Ilford anti-static cloth work? Does the anti-stat ever lose its effectiveness?
 
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