I went down the brave/foolish route for cleaning the CCD sensor as I had dust on it.

The problem with cameras is that the CCD charges to take photos and so attracts dust to it statically.

Blowers can help for the mirror, but not for the CCD because generally, whilst it dislodges the dust, as soon as you start taking photos again, the static charge on the CCD will bring it back :( If you think about it, using a air blowing duster thingy only moves the dust around, it doesn't actually remove it from the chamber.

I bought a load of pecpads which are like 99.99% ok and wont scratch the CCD. I made up a swab and with a few drops of Eclipse cleaning fluid, very gently wipe over the CCD.

In my case, worked fine, but of course it's a risk.

Best thing to see if dust is on your CCD is to take a picture of say grey sky with a very closed aperture. That will show up the blobs against the bright background.

Have a read here: CCD / CMOS Cleaning Photo Gallery by Nicholas R. at pbase.com

Cheers for that. The ccd is the "white plastic bit" behind the mirror? Excuse my ignorance

If so, I have attempted to clean that before with cotton buds...which sounds like it may be the wrongest thing to do ever. The bit I mean is where the shutter curtain lives. That seems to be the main culprit.

You only see the CCD if you put the lock the mirror in the up position. It will be in a menu setup option on the camera.

CCDs are normally dark green in colour. Don't kow what it's like on a 350D as I'm a Nikon man myself

You only see the CCD if you put the lock the mirror in the up position. It will be in a menu setup option on the camera.

CCDs are normally dark green in colour. Don't kow what it's like on a 350D as I'm a Nikon man myself

Ahh right, I know which bit you mean. I havent touched that part