Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

You need to think about things before you draw silly conclusions.

Hear rises, hence the warm air does not fall into the open top of a bag. Cold air falls, so it stays in the bottom of the bag. There is no exchange, instead the air stratifies by temperature, and remains rather stagnant unless there is some other cause for air circulation.

Air exchange is not where condensation forms. Warm moist air has to come into contract with a cold object that cools the warm moist air to below the Dew Point. The warm moist air would have to get into the camera bag. Water proofing doesn't make any difference (your original claim).

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

This video is spot on, but it has nothing to do with condensation and everything to do with long term storage conditions.

treadwl Loc: South Florida

geta package of hand warmers. activate two of them and use a rubber band to hold them on the barrel of the lens. Condensation is gone!

mcveed Loc: Kelowna, British Columbia (between trips)

You're thinking too narrowly. When a mass of warm humid air comes into contact with a cold air mass they mix and the result is an area of humid cooling air - and, when it reaches the dew point, it rains. I would never trust that there wouldn't be enough disturbance in the air to cause mixing.

whitewolfowner

I was only giving a caution and you are assuming the bag has only gone from one direction to another; not realizing it can go either way; my comment was generalization over all. I'm not one minded and assume others are not either, but I guess I made an error there, huh.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Living in a cold, dry environment north of the Arctic Circle hardly qualifies anyone as an expert on condensation. Having lived most of my life near the Tropic of Cancer I probably know a little more about it than the average bear.

Condensation is only going to be a problem if the temperature of the object (camera, grass, windshield, etc.) is below the dew point of the surrounding air.

If you seal your dry gear in an airtight container while you are still outside in the cold, the air surrounding the camera will already have a dew point lower than the camera or lens. As the gear warms up, no additional moisture will enter the bag. Once the camera has come to room temperature you can remove it safely from the container.

The same technique works in reverse in the tropics when you go from A/C to the outside, even in a rain forest.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Since you admit knowing nothing about the topic, why pontificate about it? Worse, why make up silly remarks about others who do have expertize.

Off hand you will have a hard time finding anyone who is living in a "dry environment" north of the Arctic Circle. Here in Alaska there are only a handful of small Native villages where that description fits. All of them are necessarily south of the Brooks Range.

More typical is a place like Barrow. The surrounding terrain in 70% water, the humidity ranges from lows of occasionally down to less than 68% relative humidity (referenced as "mildly humid") to just as often nearing 98% ("very humid"). Barrow, as an example, almost never gets down to the 50% that sb mentioned as the highest they get in Colorado. (Of course just south of the Arctic Circle, in Fairbanks, it isn't uncommon to see less than 10% RH...)

If you'd like to learn how condensation actually works, live in Barrow for 12 months and you'll get more experience than anyone in the Lower-48 will in literally a life time.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

So I will add "dew point" to the growing list of subjects you don't understand.

whitewolfowner

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Floyd has probably not given much thought to how frost-free refrigerators and air conditioners remove moisture from the air.

If he does not recall his elementary school general science, he can Google dew point and also learn about frost point.

For the rest of us these concepts are as mundane as daily sunrises and sunsets.

whitewolfowner

And then there is reality!

tinwhistle

This has been a bit of enlightenment for me. All this talk of cold,condensation, humidity, etc. I never considered all these things 'til now. Going way back to the early to mid '60s when I spent 2 years traveling all over a delightful little Asian country on Uncles dime I took a gazillion pictures with a cheap Japanese 35mm, about as humid as it gets, and never thought a whit about it. Camera worked flawlessly until stolen. Here I am, some 50 years later, in the exact opposite climate with much more expensive digital equipment and still as careless as ever. Dumb luck, I suppose. Never had rig go sideways 'cause of cold and/or moisture. Ignorance is bliss...

whitewolfowner

Hey, chalk it up to sh*t happens. I had a similar incident about twenty years ago when I moved from the northeast to the southwest. I had family in middle Tennessee and in the moving process I went to visit them, so I packed up as many boxes I had packed as I could, threw them in my truck and took them there, which was almost half way. That way, I only had to go to there to get them later. It was during the summer and I knew they'd be stored in the barn, so I only took what wouldn't be damaged while sitting there for a few months. I unknowingly had my baseball glove of twenty years in one of the boxes. When I got to the southwest and unpacked the boxes I found my baseball glove totally green; it was encased in mold and it even got into the inner pores of the leather. It was ruined and I had to throw it out.

tinwhistle

Affixed my Mark II to my tripod last night, went out into a raging snow storm (16 degrees), threw a small towel over the rig and shot away. Spent maybe 20 minutes out side, brought the whole thing into the garage, then the camera into the house. Camera still works today....