How to handle possible fungus items?

[steve_geo]

A curiosity question.

If I have a lens/camera that I suspect might have been attacked by mold or fungus in the past, should I keep it separate from my other gear to prevent 'infection' ?

Any treatment I can give to the suspect item to calm my nerves?

Thanks
Steve

[Gary Beasley]

Ziplock bag with dessicant. Might even reduce the fungus appearance a bit.

[John Kasaian]

Desenex?:eek:

[RDKirk]

A curiosity question.

If I have a lens/camera that I suspect might have been attacked by mold or fungus in the past, should I keep it separate from my other gear to prevent 'infection' ?

Any treatment I can give to the suspect item to calm my nerves?

Thanks
Steve

It's not a matter of "infection" from lens to lens because fungus spores are everywhere all the time anyway.

If you want to preserve that lens, you'll have to go to a good technician and have it professionally cleaned. If it's an older lens with a single-layer coating, it could possibly be recoated (the fungus excrement etches lens coatings).

If you peruse the building science forums, you learn that fungus needs a specific condition to grow: 70% relative humidity for at least 24 hours. If you deprive it of either, it stops growing.

For those of us living in air conditioned settings, that's easy to achieve: Don't store equipment in bags or cases at night. Put it out on a shelf or table where it can enjoy the dehumidified atmosphere (cover it with a clean towel to keep off dust).

You can get three cheap hygrometers at a home store and measure different areas of your house (get three in the hope that two will agree). One thing you'll discover is that the relative humidity can vary considerably even in the same room. Generally the corners near the floor will be more humid than the center of the room.

If you don't live in an airconditioned space AND your hygrometers show your living space averages 70 percent relative humidity, it's a lot easier to lower relative humidity in an enclosed or semi-enclosed space by raising the temperature a few degrees than by trying to remove the moisture.

When I lived in SEA, I commandeered a kitchen cabinet and mounted a 15-watt lamp in it. That gently warmed the space enough to lower the humidity while I stored my equipment there at night. All it takes is a few hours a day to keep the fungus growth cycle broken. You can also buy pricey "dry cabinets" that have a mild heat element to do the same thing.

Dissicant is for when you need to store equipment in an air-tight container for a specific period of time. It's 'way too much trouble to use as a long-term workign method. In a truly humid climate, it gets saturated very quickly, it's a lot harder to recondition than most people think, then you're just sealing your equipment into a humidor.