@miketerndrup wrote:Thank You I will I guess I should close this topic before I get in trouble
Hi Mike:
Thank you for clarifying what the base issue actually was. The better the understanding of an issue the more effective the advice you will get. The conversation has taken a completely different tack from that one post you made.
I agree with two statements: first that a lot of camera shops will not necessarily do a great job in cleaning a sensor and that, done carefully, you can clean your own sensor with the right equipment. There are sensor cleaning kits for various-sized sensors (you need to get the right one). They come with all that you will need and if you carefully read the instructions beforehand and follow them, you should see a marked improvement.
Definitely having a sensor cleaned by Canon should not be impacted by the age of the camera. I bought a 20 y.o. camera and had it cleaned by Canon - they took just a couple of days to return it to me with some other work done too - and the charge was reasonable. The fact that there is so much dust and other particulares on your sensor suggests to me you should send it in for a sensor and internal cleaning, as there may be more dust in other nooks and crannies of the internals of the body that should be removed.
So, don't think of throwing the baby out with the bathwater by thinking that for something as normal and minor as a sensor and internal clean that you need to get a new camera. 
For future reference, a lot of the dust comes into a camera from three main sources:
1. The camera is opened when the lens is changed and dust gets into the body. This can be avoided to a degree by:
a) Not changing lenses in the open, or in dusty areas.
b) If you need to do so, turn the camera off - if the body is open and the sensor is powered, it acts like a dust magnet and pulls dust onto your sensor. Make sure the body is pointing front down, to stop dust falling into the body. Have your other lens ready with the back cap off (and the back pointing down), take the first lens off, put the new one on and then cap the now unused lens. Then power the camera back on again.
2. Use the EVF instead of the rear LCD to shoot images. There are a couple of reasons for this.
a) If you shoot with telephotos, holding the camera away from your body provides an extremely unstable platform and is likely to lead to loss of images via camera shake. You need three points of support for stability - that's why tripods have 3 legs. 
Use the EVF with your arms tucked into your torso and the camera pressed to your face as you look through the EVF. In terms of dust, when you use Live View and the LCD to focus and compose, the protection of the mirror and shutter are lost as the sensor is exposed while you are zooming in and out - see (3).
3. Lenses that extend a lot, and many zooms do this, act like bellows: sucking in air to allow the lens to extend but pulling in contaminants with them. When the lens is shortened again the dust particles get pushed into the camera body. Getting weather protected lenses - i.e. L-series lenses will help with this as they have seals and gaskets to reduce the flow of air into the body. Also, not rapidly extending and retracting the lens will slow down the air flow. As in (2) having the shutter open and mirror up will simply provide a direct path for dust to go to the sensor.
It is definitely a good idea to use a blow drier to clean the inside of the body frequently. Again, point the body down and use a good blower (Rocket blowers are good) to blow dust out of the body - during this the shutter should be closed.
