How to avoid condensation inside housing in hot humid weather?

Julian500 wrote:

I own an EWA Marine bag/housing for my 5D and have used it only a small handful of times. A couple years ago I fried a camera inside of it due to a huge amount of condensation build up while I was kayaking in very hot humid sunny conditions. I was trying to keep it out of direct sunlight by placing a wet T shirt over it but in the end I found almost a half inch of water sitting on the bottom of the bag inside. Now I have an assignment in Florida coming up which will require some underwater shots and was looking at buying one of those Meikon housings for Canon 5Diii to make my setup look less clunky.

Since I'll find myself once again in humid environment and currently live in NYC where it definitely won't be anything but cold before then, I can't test things out beforehand. I've read about placing the camera in the housing and sealing in as dry of air as possible (such as air conditioned room). Also using silica packets.

If I stick to these two am I totally fine? Should I still avoid letting the camera/housing sit in the sun once it's sealed?

Thanks for any tips!

Julian

Half an inch of water is too much for condensation. The nylon bag leaks and with every use you risk to flood your camera...

A silicon bag helps against humidity, also assembly in low humidity conditions (at low temperature), if possible...

A vacuum system is very effective in preventing condensation. I recommend to go for a housing with vacuum (I do not know whether Meikon provides vacuum, you have to check out by yourself; also other budget housings, e.g. Fantasea etc...). So far I only had once condensation inside my housing (Oly EM1II in Nauticam housing), despite of the vacuum, but this was directly on the equator (Raja Ampat) on a complete rainday (the kind when you hang up a towel for drying it will become even more wet; nothing will dry then all the clothings you wear are wet, because of the high humidity). I assembled the rig inside the hut at this high humidity and under the water the domeport partially was foggy - nothing like fluid water inside the housing detectable, not even a droplet...

Wolfgang