Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Preventing fungus from developing on your camera

Unless you are living in the hot and dry area, you shouldn’t be worrying about fungus. But if you live in high humidity places like Malaysia, the chances of fungus developing in your camera body or even inside your precious lens are pretty high.
Once it’s in there, nothing much you can do. It’s either you send it for a cleaning service at the professional service centre or of course you can do it yourself. I’m not sure how much it will cost you if you want to get the professional service, but you don’t have to worry much on the result.

If you find the fungus just started to develop on the external camera body, like mine, you can treat it yourself by using vinegar. Dip a hard cotton swab with the vinegar, and rub it gently on the effected area. Acidity in the vinegar is very mild so it is quite save to use it as the removing agent.

As for the lens, you can spot the fungus at the connector ring inside the lens. If you want to do it yourself, get a watch screw driver and remove the glass from the housing tube one by one. Cross your finger and hope you can remember each glass position.

Wiseman always said “preventing is better than searching a cure”. To stop fungus, store your camera in a humidity free container. You can get it from your special camera store or even on the internet. But do you know that you can make yourself a decent humidity free container? Coming up next, “How to build a humidity free container”.

No comments: