There is nothing worse than an underwater camera housing that always fogs up. Luckily, there’s a few quick and simple steps to consistently keep your camera housing from fogging up.
1. Keep the Housing Dry
Keeping any amount of moisture out of your camera housing is the quickest and easiest way to maintain a fog-free underwater housing. Any time you are opening up or closing the housing, or even just cleaning the o-ring, you need to be particularly aware of every single drop of water. If you close the housing up with just a drop of water inside, that water will quickly turn to into water vapor once the inside of the housing heats up, as you begin shooting underwater.
2. Keep the Housing Cool
Since it is quite likely that there will be a small droplet of water hiding in the housing somewhere, it’s always a good idea to keep the housing in a shady place any time your are in between snorkels. Also, any time you are aren’t using it underwater, try and keep the camera turned off so that the heat the camera emits when it’s constantly on wont’ vaporize any water droplets inside.
3. Silica Packets
Many people will try to solve their foggy housing issue by inserting a desiccant pack into the housing. While these little sachets will absorb moisture in the event of a minor flooding, they will not pull any moisture residing in the crevices of the housing, so whatever moisture is still in the housing will very likely remain where it was. Also, whatever moisture these desiccant packets do absorb, once the camera housing heats up, the moisture held within the desiccant pack will once again be vaporized, and we’re left in the same situation as when we started. Long story short, desiccant packets are there to assist in the event of a flood, not prevent fogging. In fact, if you leave a semi-saturated desicant packet in your camera housing, it will actually promote fogging.
