Underwater Photography

Camera housing fogging problem

I use an Olympus 360 digital camera with an Ikelite housing. I had a major fogging problem during my dive in the Philippines. About 15 minutes into the dive the inside of the housing in front of the lens would fog up. The problem is that humid air is trapped in the housing when closed and condensates underwater when the temperature around the housing drops and possible the temperature inside the housing raises due to the heat generated by the camera, especially digital cameras. I single small drop of water will most certainly give you lots of problems.

I have heard mention of the use of defoggers and antifogging agents used for car windshields and mirrors. Although do not plan to try this, I can't recommend this solution as any film applied to the glass is likely to compromise the photos anyway. Avoiding trapping humid air in the housing altogether seems like a likely solution. However, depending on your diving situation, this is likely to be impractical or impossible. Since I use the LCD, I need to load fresh batteries before every dive, forcing me to open the camera housing. Most of my diving is boat diving so I have to open the housing on the boat. If possible, open and close your housing in an air-conditioned room. However, I rarely have had these prime conditions. So for starters avoid opening the housing in places with high humidity such as over water, around green vegetation. Certainly never open the housing when there is the possibility of getting even a small drop of water in the housing, such as with wet hands, in the rain, etc.

I solved my fogging problem using silica gel desiccant packs. These are the small "do not eat" packets you see in many food items. I have read, but never tried, that small pieces of a "minipad" (feminine hygiene product) can be used which is cheaper and more readily available overseas. I purchased my packs from The Preservation Station on-line. There were very professional and helpful in processing my order and I would recommend them. When I received the packets, I transferred them to a small Tupperware box for convenience. Do not leave the packets open to air or they will become useless. I used two 2-gram packets per dive. I changed the packet before every dive. This may have been over-kill, but I had to change the batteries anyway and the packets were cheaper than the batteries. Conditions forced me to open the camera case to change the batteries on the boat in a non-air-conditioned, humid environment. In some cases I had to re-open the case immediately before the dive. However, I did not have a single fogging issue.