lens fungus problems

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jimmyb

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I haven't done much photography recently so my gear hasn't been out much.

I got it out recently to find most of my lenses have fungus in them, some are very bad. I'm not new to having fungus in lenses, I bought one second hand a few years back that was infested with fungus which i sent back.

I've stored the lenses and body in a clean zipped up camera bag with 5 silica gel packs in there too.

There is the tell tale spider web type funguses growing on the glass of the lenses, both inside and out and the mirror of my 50D has fungus growing on it as does the viewfinder.

Is this common place to have after being in storage even with silica gel packs used? Has anyone else suffered from this problem? Non of the lenses are expensive thankfully but there are some old nikon ones that i really like and a cosina macro that is now obsolete.

I have my camera gear covered under the house insurance...is this an insurable damage, has anyone claimed for this sort of thing before?
 
In over 50 years of photography I have never encountered that problem. I think you need to look at storage conditions.
 
Silica gel has a certain amount of capacity - once used up, it needs to be re-dried in an oven.
 
I would look into where you are storing the equipment, damp conditions are no good for your own personal heath as well as the equipment.

If the property has a damp issue, then you may have an avenue to explore with the house insurance aspect.
 
jimmyb said:
I haven't done much photography recently so my gear hasn't been out much.

I got it out recently to find most of my lenses have fungus in them, some are very bad. I'm not new to having fungus in lenses, I bought one second hand a few years back that was infested with fungus which i sent back.

I've stored the lenses and body in a clean zipped up camera bag with 5 silica gel packs in there too.

There is the tell tale spider web type funguses growing on the glass of the lenses, both inside and out and the mirror of my 50D has fungus growing on it as does the viewfinder.

Is this common place to have after being in storage even with silica gel packs used? Has anyone else suffered from this problem? Non of the lenses are expensive thankfully but there are some old nikon ones that i really like and a cosina macro that is now obsolete.

I have my camera gear covered under the house insurance...is this an insurable damage, has anyone claimed for this sort of thing before?
Click to expand...

How is humidity and temperature where you live?
 
cheers for the pointers, i live in manchester, so pretty normal temperature/humidity for england. I have ordered a relative humidity meter though, waiting for that to arrive.

I'll look into the damp problem and see where that gets me.
 
Not covered by insurance I am afraid!


Heather
 
Best thing to do is take off the lens caps and body caps and leave the lenses exposed to sunlight for a couple of weeks minimum. This will kill off the fungus and spores. Then, store them in sealable transparent plastic containers in sunlight with fresh silica gel. Then just use them, the fungus will be dead, they won't get any worse and the image quality won't suffer to any noticable degree.
I wouldn't get too hung up about fungus on lenses, just let the light get to them and keep em arid.

But, I would send the camera off for a professional clean.

That was the advice I was given when I got paranoid and blamed lens mould for a sinus infection.:)
 
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