Camera Cleaning

[amy_bb]

Hi folks,

I just spent a lovely week at the beach with my family and of course my camera came with me! I did my best to keep it from having any direct contact with the sand and made no lens changes while at the beach. However, there is some sand on the outside of the camera (both on the body and on the lens housing) and my 18-200mm lens is having a bit of a struggle zooming and I think it is due to the sand grit that has gotten lodged in the lens body (just the outside, not the inside as far as I can tell).

For those of you who travel with your camera and specifically beach photographers, is it a good idea to take my camera in for some kind of cleaning? It is not malfunctioning and the pics look fine so I'm a bit hesitant to have any work done if I should just follow the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" philosophy.

Any advice appreciated.

Amy