mattloaf
Registered
Ive been playing around with a few different ways to stop my housing from fogging up. Im shooting a Canon G1 in an Ikelite housing and my wife uses a Canon A70 in a Canon housing. The fogging occurs when the digital camera heats up the humid air inside the housing. By far the part of the camera that generates the most heat is the screen. Heres a few tricks to help fight the fog.
1. Use desiccators. My wife works for a biotech company and has access to some professional grade desiccators (which can be dried out in a oven and reused) but any silica gel based desiccator will do. If you cant find anywhere to buy them, this is what I did. Go to your local shoe store (I went to the macys mens shoe department) and ask them for some. Every pair of dress shoes they get have a desiccator in the box. After explaining to the woman working there that a desiccator is just those anti moisture packets, she was able to score me almost 100 of them just off the floor and near the trash. The nice thing about these desiccators is that they are thin and will even fit in the very space limited Canon housings.
2. Make your own desiccators. I did this by buying that paint strainer material from the hardware store (white mesh material). I then bought some of that new type of crystal kitty litter, its just silica gel crystals like the other kinds of desiccators. I crushed it up into small pieces (but not powder), sowed it up into the paint strainer material using nylon thread. Those that I have made have worked great so far. Be careful not to use the anti humidity Calcium Chloride they sell in hardware stores. I found it to be corrosive when dissolved.
3. Turn your screen off when there is nothing to shoot. On my Canon G1 and A70 you can hit the display button to turn off the screen. Turning your screen off is a pain, but it will generate much less heat then leaving it on full time. Also it will save you some battery time. The other option is turning your camera off when not shooting on the dive. But the start up time from powering on takes much longer then just turning on the display. And lord knows that a few seconds matter when that once in a lifetime shot swims by.
4. Make sure you seal the housing in a dry place. This is kinda obvious, but try not to get any extra moisture in your housing. I found the engine room on live-a-board is ideal. The air is usually pretty dry and you wont have drastic temperature increase like you will coming from an air-conditioned room.
5. This is mainly for the tropics, but be careful about taking your camera from a cold air-conditioned room outside. You will notice the lens will fog right up due to the temperature change. Try to keep it in a sealed container and store it somewhere thats close to the ambient temperature outside if possible.
If anyone has anything they want to add, feel free.
1. Use desiccators. My wife works for a biotech company and has access to some professional grade desiccators (which can be dried out in a oven and reused) but any silica gel based desiccator will do. If you cant find anywhere to buy them, this is what I did. Go to your local shoe store (I went to the macys mens shoe department) and ask them for some. Every pair of dress shoes they get have a desiccator in the box. After explaining to the woman working there that a desiccator is just those anti moisture packets, she was able to score me almost 100 of them just off the floor and near the trash. The nice thing about these desiccators is that they are thin and will even fit in the very space limited Canon housings.
2. Make your own desiccators. I did this by buying that paint strainer material from the hardware store (white mesh material). I then bought some of that new type of crystal kitty litter, its just silica gel crystals like the other kinds of desiccators. I crushed it up into small pieces (but not powder), sowed it up into the paint strainer material using nylon thread. Those that I have made have worked great so far. Be careful not to use the anti humidity Calcium Chloride they sell in hardware stores. I found it to be corrosive when dissolved.
3. Turn your screen off when there is nothing to shoot. On my Canon G1 and A70 you can hit the display button to turn off the screen. Turning your screen off is a pain, but it will generate much less heat then leaving it on full time. Also it will save you some battery time. The other option is turning your camera off when not shooting on the dive. But the start up time from powering on takes much longer then just turning on the display. And lord knows that a few seconds matter when that once in a lifetime shot swims by.
4. Make sure you seal the housing in a dry place. This is kinda obvious, but try not to get any extra moisture in your housing. I found the engine room on live-a-board is ideal. The air is usually pretty dry and you wont have drastic temperature increase like you will coming from an air-conditioned room.
5. This is mainly for the tropics, but be careful about taking your camera from a cold air-conditioned room outside. You will notice the lens will fog right up due to the temperature change. Try to keep it in a sealed container and store it somewhere thats close to the ambient temperature outside if possible.
If anyone has anything they want to add, feel free.
