Air-con mists up my lens?
 

I'm in Vietnam and it's Hot.

We're coming to the end of our trip and have treated ourselves to a posh hotel for couple of days. Only trouble is the air-con turns the room into arctic temperatures, which is great when you walk in, but not so good when you go out with the mkii expecting to shoot anything soon.
There is condensation all over the lens. is this damaging my new camera/lens, and is there a way to avoid it?

This is the first time we've been cool on this trip, but if it's causing my camera problems i'll have to grin and bear the heat.

Any thoughts?

Dom

Move the camera outside, 15 minutes before you leave the hotel room. I had same issue when in Mexico. I moved the camera outside in camera bag opened a bit, on the balcony to let it adjust to outside humidity.

Get your bag outside in sun but don't open it before your gear is warm enough.

I was late....

Anyway you do the same in winter time but now when you get in.

I have had this happen a lot. In traveling in AC cars down south. Entering ski lodge from very cold outside temps etc.

In the days of video tape this was very bad, condensation on the drum kept camera from running for an hour or more at times, or worse wrapped tape around head and jammed transport.

Condensation on the lens is annoying but will clear fairly quickly w/o any ill effects.

Keeping camera and lenses in a airtight ziplock bag when moving from cold to hot humid air will keep condensation to a minimum. Don't take them out of bags until they have warmed to outside temperature. This can be sped up by letting the sun heat up the gear. Use good judgement here, don't cook anything (legal made me say that).

On a lot of shoots we have one car/SUV/van with AC turned off for moving locations, to keep gear in, seniority or luck of the draw decides driver.

Thanks for the advice.

Coming from England i'm not used to this problem.

Now i've turned down the air-con a bit as it was a bit much anyway.

Hopefully i'll be posting some Vietnam stuff on this forum in a couple of weeks.

Cheers

Dom

We have this problem all the time when shooting in the Caribbean... we use large
zipper type plastic bags to keep the moisture off of the cameras...

Then when we bring them out of the room or car we let the bag warm up to ambient temperature before opening the bag to get the cameras out...

We do this because we have had situations where the condensation was so bad that it
formed water drops.. they can run into your camera or lens and mess things up quickly.