Gear Protection against Abrupt Temperature Change

[existrandom]

hello all,

it is summer now in the place i live and people boost the air-conditioners real hard, despite the warns of global warming;

i often find myself having to come in and outdoor with drastic temperature shift from 18C to 32C in a split second, no joke

besides taking care of myself against catching cold;
how should i protect my photo gear, which are almost always with me in a Domke bag?

thanks and hope to hear your comments and suggestions 🙂

lee

 

[Justin Low]

Camera bag padding seems to keep the temperature in the bag fairly constant, as long as it stays closed. I'm not sure about Domke, but my Billingham has a padded top flap that loosely 'seals' the entire insert.

 

[john neal]

What about one of those padded thermal "cooler" bags designed to keep a 6-pack cold?

Condensation might be a problem though, as they don't breath too well.

Regards
John

 

[murrayatuptown]

I doubt, unless you have hands-on experience to dismiss my doubt, that small a change would cause condensation or instant migration of lens lubricant. I did get in the car today (hot day) and when I turned on the air conditioning, residual condensation did fog my glasses, but I was right in the air stream.

If you do experience condensation, it's because a cold object entered an environment with a relative humidity level too high for the dew point at the cold object's temperature. This does not happen the other way around...cold air hitting a hot object.

As with electronics, etc., when contained in a shipping container or padded bag as you are discussing, one needs to wait for the cold object to equilibrate to the ambient temperature slowly (depends on it's mass). You've probably seen rules of thumb for warming film (depends on how cold it was and how massive (35 mm, 120, sheet film box, etc).

The padded bag might regulate temperature by keeping the camera where it was...but I think if you are changing environments and remaining in each one long enough for the camera to eventually get up or down to the 'new' temperature, you're stuck with a time lag.
If there's a lot of stuff in the bag, it takes a long time to equilibrate


And remember relative (and I suppose absolute) humidity goes to zero below freezing.

Other effects like thermal expansion of camera parts should be ok within the specfied (somewhere, maybe in a manual) operating or storage range of the camera. Speed accurracy etc might change over temperature, but that's life.