Whats the general experience with self-cleaning using those one-time disposable swabs? Am I going to ruin my camera lmao

Physics and photos, either philm or phdigital
Also @alamogordoglass on the Bird Site, generic leftist, postdoctoral space researcher on da computer.
Whats the general experience with self-cleaning using those one-time disposable swabs? Am I going to ruin my camera lmao
it's way less dangerous than people online would have you believe. There's a chunk of glass in front of the sensor; don't scratch the glass and you'll be fine. The purpose-made sensor swabs and cleaning solution are finnicky as hell, but they work and they seem to be safe.
I was cleaning my camera's sensor pretty often when I was using my APS-C mirrorless camera a lot (it doesn't have a sensor cleaning function so it just constantly picks up dust lmao) - the hardest part was getting the swab correctly saturated with cleaning solution. If it's too dry you leave a bunch of annoying streaks across the sensor and you have to try again with another swab. I think you can run into other issues if it's too wet, so hitting that sweet spot can be tricky.
I found this guide to be helpful, particularly the video and the IMPORTANT NOTE in the text: https://photosol.com/faq/
Thank you! I'm getting a kit that seems to not affect the coating, or is at least gentle according to the makers, highly rated, my a7II was second hand so theres a few very small blemishes on the sensor which definitely need cleaning, I didn't realise how ineffective the ultrasonic sensor cleaner was on the a7 series!
my big nikon DSLR has a self-cleaning mode that I have set to automatically clean when the camera is turned on and off, and that seems to work well. but the junk does still accumulate - just more slowly.
Good luck, and don't be afraid to use 3-4 swabs! I went through a full pack the first time I tried cleaning my sensor because I kept using too dry swabs 😭
Update to this! It worked well the first time, second time after I came back from a holiday was fine also, surprisingly easy though a little hair raising every time