Fogging problem with Camera Housing

[gert7to3]

My original post with the tank air idea was intended for people who had to open their housing on a boat to swap memory cards or batteries.

Your idea of inflating a plastic bag, with your housing in it, from a scuba cylinder is exellent. Maybe purge your Spare Air bottle into the bag in your room, then recharge it before the dive?

Also, most plastic bags are flexible enough to permit loading the camera into the housing then closing and latching the housing, with the bag sealed.

Note about the hair dryer, warm air has the capacity to hold more moisture than cold air. That's why other solutions involved closing housings under the air blast from an air conditioner. This would work with either room A/C or in a car, if the A/C has been running a while.

 

[fl-diver]

I think this has already been mentioned but I always load the camera in the housing at home in the AC usually the night before diving. I have an SD630 and with a 2gig card I have plenty of battery and memory capacity to last 2 dives. I have been taking a lot of video which may require me to change cards between dives. I usually take about 30 sec clips and get 16 min total. Enough for now.

 

[texey]

Many good ideas in this thread. Than you everyone for your comments!

 

[jkling17]

Bill's advice is very good. See my UW Basics page here for what has worked well for me - very similar to Bill. Jeff's UW Photography Page

I would stay away from using anti-fog in your case. Just turn off your camera when you're not using it and set it to a 30 sec or 1 min timeout. If you're going to use silica gel, ok just be careful - see my page for details.

 

[GeorgiaT]

Fogging: factors include humid air: close up the camera in its case in an airconditioned dry area. Temperature changes-- indeed better to keep camera in water so temperature changes minimzed. Ive noticed huge increase in fogging since I wswitched to optical sync from electircla synch-- the heat gernerated by the internal flash makes for fogging which I never had with electrical synch (no internal flash needed). Taking many photos in quick succesion exacerbates the problem-- increased heat from camera battery and internal flash. USe a couple of silica pads (but be careful not to interfere with o ring-- I flooded a camera this way!). I do not think you should use mask defogger but intersted to hear what others say. Above all keep air inside housing DRY by preparing everything in your room and not outsie in humid environmetn-- or switch to electrical synch!