It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity

[zincprincess]

The family took a quick trip to the beach before my daughter starts school. I had good luck taking pictures in the morning but my late evening pictures of the sunset were a complete bust because I couldn’t get the stupid lens to quit fogging up. After 30 minutes I gave up. Any suggestions on how to avoid or quickly remedy this?

[CauseISaidSo]

My camera manual says to put your camera & lens in plastic bags (before taking them outside) and then let them acclimate to the temperature change before removing them from the plastic bags. I’ve never tried it, so let me know if it works if you do.

[orionid]

I had that problem going topside from inside of a temperature/humidity controlled submarine while we were passing the panama canal. I put both lenscaps on and stuck it in my pants until it was no longer uncomfortably cold. Worked like a champ, but I don’t particularly recommend it.

[Yugoboy]

I was thinking the same thing, but she mentioned that she quit after a full half hour. How humid was it?

In my case, I know that a quick temperature change will produce those results. I’ve got an ass-load of desiccants in my camera bag so that temperature acclimation happens relatively dryly, and if shooting conditions are humid, at least the camera won’t stay that way.

If it’s too humid, forget about it. But that’s like FOG levels of humidity, so she may not have taken long enough to let the temperature change, or she was going in and out of a car with a/c or something. If it was darned foggy, ain’t too much to do, but do your best.

Also… if I remember my last trip to a beach (outer banks of NC) the sea air has a certain “something” that likes to cling to shiny surfaces like car paint and the like. If the humidity was up, this may be the case, and your lens needs cleaning STAT.

[zincprincess]

The temp inside the condo was about 72 and the outside temp was about 88. I’m sure the humidity was around 90%. The same thing happened that morning but it cleared up in 10 minutes or so. I will try the plastic bag trick and see what happens.

[Farktographer]

I had that issue when I was in Taiwan – it was so humid that my lens would fog up repeatedly whenever I left the indoors to venture out. I can concur that it can take longer than 30 minutes for the lens to acclimate…sometimes I’d be carrying around the camera for a full hour before it was ready to take good photos. In the meantime, I was just wiping down the protective lens filter with a microfiber cloth between shots…did the trick for what I needed.

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