Wet, hot bodies. What do I do?

While there are plenty of great tips here I just wanted to comment on the quality of your photos, FANTASTIC great action captures !

burntbizzkit wrote in post #2353165
I really hate shooting swim meets because of the extreme humidity. It takes at least 30 minutes for my camera to be useable at all beacause everything fogges up instantly when I enter the pool and stays foggy until the lens and camera are adjusted to the new environment.

Any tips for keeping the lens unfogged? As soon as I wipe it off with some lens paper, it instanly fogs up again.

The advice on plastic bags and letting the gear come to temperature is exactly right.

I'd be concerned about the effects of that moisture inside your cameras. There are numerous reports of just this sort of thing causing damage in the camera and corrosion. This is typically not covered by warranty.

What happens is if there is any ionic contamination on the circuit boards of your camera (and there is) and it comes in contact with liquid moisture, then corrosion starts to happen. This corrosion grows in little fingers towards higher voltage areas on the circuit board. When they reach that spot, and provided that they are large enough, they form a short. that short can destroy the semiconductors that are not designed to handle that much current.

I'd suggest that you get your camera checked out, maybe opened up to see if this is going on.

I'd also be doubly worried about it because of the presence of chlorine in the environment in which you are shooting. Chlorine is highly corrosive and goes nuts in the presence of moisture.

This is all happening because your camera gear is below the dew point of the air inside the pool area. Until your camera warms up, the moisture is going to condense on that colder surface. It is happening in your camera as well as out side.

J

I have heard the same thing but to leave it in your camera bag until it gets to tempurature.

JohnJ80: You just scared the crap out of me and I don't think I can ever shoot in a pool again

I think some of the really bad condensation problems have happened when going from room temp to warmer and very high humidity as compared from winter conditions to indoors for the simple fact that the 'tropical' air carries more humidity (more water) in an absolute sense. In the winter the air outside if very dry; the air inside is still often only relative humidity of 30%. Because of that I'd be more careful and go with the bags.

J.

Here are some of my recent swim meet shots, these were taken with a Nikon D2H, 70-200VR 2.8lens, 800 ISO, no flash, preset WB using expodisk, if I remember correctly 250/sec 5.6, it may have been 200/sec 4.5.

These were run through noise ninja and I did brigthen them with PS, the one photo looks darker than the others, I took that shot rather quickly when I walked in the pool area, I got there a little late so I had not set the camera at that point.

I know this is a Canon forum and you may ask why I am here, well I have been looking into the Canon 1D, I just thought I would post these shots.

I always show up early for the high humidity shoots. It is very bad on cameras