Shot this a while back, but I thought I'd share one experience I had while visiting a rain forest exhibit. Temperature was cold outside and then stepping into the exhibit the camera immediately fogged up. Even though I wiped the lens down, it continued to fog up. It actually took about 15 minutes before the gear acclimated to the right temperature. This all happened before I was able to take these photos (seen here).
I've worked with cheaper non resistant lenses and the moisture can actually get INSIDE of the lens. Once that happens you'll need to go through some steps to get that moisture out, which is not easy. Moral of the story is to know what you'll be getting into and bring the right gear. The GH3 body has been redesigned to be more weather resistant and i'm using the 12-35mm F/2.8 Dust and Moisture resistant lens.
Panasonic 12-35mm F/2.8 Lens
Martin D
Hey Emm,
I double-dog dare you ...boil your lens! ...check out the Nikon article ...click here
Alex
I had to chuckle when I saw this post. I live in Singapore, where is hot and humid every single day of the year. We have this problem DAILY when going from air conditioning to the hot outdoors to shoot. When I first moved here 17 years ago, i actually missed an assignment for a major magazine because my camera and lens was fogged up for nearly 40 min, which was the only time that the subject was available. Hard lesson to learn. Now what we do is put the camera bag outside in the sun to warm up 15 min before we need to shoot outside. There are pros and cons to living in the tropics (but I don't miss shovelling snow...) Cheers!
Stephen S.
If you are going from somewhere cold to somewhere really hot and/or humid, even if it's going from the outdoors in the winter cold to a heated building, or from an air-conditioned building to outdoors on a warm summer day, your gear can fog up.
However, if you seal your camera up air-tight in a ziploc bag when you are in the cold, before going into the heat, the condensation will form up on the outside of the ziploc bag, not the camera.
Once the fog has dissipated on the bag, you can be pretty sure the camera has warmed up within, and can safely be removed with no condensation forming.
Emm
Post author@VanWeddings - Typically the camera equipment can survive, but moisture inside of a lens can turn into haze or fungus. You were smart to let the moisture escape instead of wrapping it back up inside of a bag. Silica gel is a good way to absorb moisture from equipment. For extreme cases i've seen some examples where people will put a lens upside down with the caps off and heat it up to let the moisture evaporate through the top. You have to use very low heat as to not actually damage the lens.
VanWeddings
i took a gh2 with olympus 12mm from the outside cold into a rainforest exhibit once, and it also fogged up immediately, requiring a wipe down of the lens. but there were no lasting effects.
quite a few years ago i took a canon rebel body with the nifty fifty to a trek in the himalayas, and it was cold and rainy for a whole week. when i finally returned to the hotel with a heater, everything fogged up massively. i unmounted the lens and left the body and lens sitting so moisture could escape. no long term effect. i still have the 50mm.
maybe i've been lucky, but i haven't had any camera equipment damaged by moisture yet.
Sonic Fields
It's interesting to know about the lens you filmed it with!