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Fogged-up binoculars - advice? (1 Viewer)

S

Sancho

Well-known member
Europe
My new pair of Bushnell Elite Custom Compact 7x26 have fogged up. They were in my jacket pocket while out walking and it rained, and although they didn´t get directly wet, the jacket was damp. I tried putting them in the hot-press/airing cupboard, but it hasn´t helped. I "googled", and followed the advice of putting them in a zip-loc bag filled with rice (as a desiccant). Has anyone any better ideas?

Edit: I added two sachets of silica-gel to the zip-loc bag, closed it, and sat the bag on top of a radiator on low heat. The rice insulates the binos from direct heat. I just checked and the fogging is diminishing, one barrel is clear again and the other is on the mend. Hopefully the patient will make a full recovery.
 
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Hi Sancho, Good luck with this. Sounds like it is going ok so far. I think I would let the zip-loc bag slightly open to allow any vapor out. A plus here for WP binoculars I would say. My Brother-in-Law has one of the older Custom Compacts and as far as I know he never had moisture problems, he is in the outdoors wet or dry, but wears WP clothes while doing it.
 
mooreorless said:
Hi Sancho, Good luck with this. Sounds like it is going ok so far. I think I would let the zip-loc bag slightly open to allow any vapor out. A plus here for WP binoculars I would say. My Brother-in-Law has one of the older Custom Compacts and as far as I know he never had moisture problems, he is in the outdoors wet or dry, but wears WP clothes while doing it.
Click to expand...

Thanks Steve, I´ll do just that. I was a bit suprised, the jacket was damp on the outside but the pockets didn´t get wet inside. Not sure if it´s internal condensation or something. Next time I´ll bring the little neoprene bag for the Bushnells, although it´s bulky and "unpocketable".
 
I think you're doing the right thing, but the desiccant and plastic bag are only necessary/useful when you are trying to dry out the bins in a place with high ambient humidity. Otherwise, if it's just a matter of water exposure causing internal fogging, setting them in a dry place should be enough. Warmth and air circulation speeds the process. I use the inside of a well vented gas oven with a persistent pilot light--same place I put my bread dough to rise.

--AP
 
Binoculars fogged up in Ireland! Can't believe. Or, how can you tell? I mean with any pair in Ireland, how can you tell if the fog is inside or in the weather?
 
Hi Sancho,

I think you are doing exactly the right thing. It should clear without problems. I'm not saying the gas oven won't work, but a flame generates a moist atmosphere and there is a risk of repeating the problem if they cool quickly. The radiator or other dry heat source is much better.

I've had my Customs for over a year without problems, but I've managed to fog up cameras in the past by putting them inside my jacket (warm and moist) and taking them out into the cold. Fortunately my high tech breathable shell jacket has a mesh internal pocket that is perfect and keeps the binos dry and cool. On more clement days, I have used the supplied case as a holster if I really don't want to take a rucksack. You can put in a silica gel sachet as a precaution.

On an unrelated note, I guess you will have found that they hang from the supplied strap at an awkward angle. A wrist strap works perfectly for me.

Though I could wish for a bit more exit pupil at this time of year, on a bright day I think they take some beating for the money. I hope you like them as much as I do.

David
 
Thanks very much folks, for the messages of support and advice, you´re like the IMF of the binocular-world;).

David, I haven´t noticed the "hang" of the binos, as I don´t use the neck-strap. I prefer to simply put them in a pocket and whisk them out when necessary. But I think in future I´ll follow your advice and use the case on a belt.

They are very nice compacts, no? I find them far easier on the eye than other "high-end" models I´ve owned in the past.
 
Thanks Steve! Do you mean put the binos in a plastic tub of some sort, and find a means to pump all the air out? I´ll ask my friend the Science Teacher at our school, he probably has some kind of device designed to create a vacuum and make a frog´s eyes pop out.
 
Yes Sancho that is what I am saying, water boils at lower temperature in a vacuum. This all seems like a lot of trouble and if what you are doing seems to work that should be ok.
 
Thanks Steve. If they´re not back to full health by tomorrow, I´ll do just that. It´s good to know in any case for future reference, and in my head I´m already designing a "Binocular Vacuum Bucket" of some sort. (I´ve only ever had a pair of binos fog internally once, years ago, and on that occasion I simply put them in the hotpress/airing cupboard. This time, I put my Customs in, forgetting of course that we have changed our hot-water cylinder and the new one has a superb lagging-insulator, so that the airing-cupboard doesn´t actually get particularly warm. D´oh.)
 
Hi Sancho,

I'm pretty confident the radiator should work.

If your silica gel packets have been sitting around for a while, the chances are that they are 'used up'. They can normally be reactivated by putting them in an electric oven at 120C/240F for an hour or two. It has to be a low or the plastic wrapper will melt. If you can't control it that low, empty the granules onto some foil, then tape them back into the packets afterwards.

No doubt the vacuum approach would work very well, but if your friend's school is anything like my son's, sadly he might be hard pushed to help. (how times have changed!)


Regards,

David




David
 
Thanks David, I put the silica gel on the radiator for an hour to dry it out, not sure if that helped. Not sure either if the Science Teacher will have anything left in the school tomorrow, it may all have been sold off to reduce the National Budget Deficit. In any case, they´re never going to replace our 20-year old prefab classrooms now.. (They can take our Honour, but they can never take our Binoculars!!!;))
 
I had a camera that was badly (and I mean badly) fogged a couple of years ago. The fogging came about as a result of me falling on my arse in a pond and the camera had a very brief period of immersion. It packed in. There was fogging in the lens and the screen went kaput.

I let it dry naturally to get the worst off and thinking that it was beyond saving, but nothing was to be lost by trying I attempted to breath some life into it. I did this by utilising a quantity of loose silica gel that my wife had stored in the loft after going off a hobby of drying flowers.

I heated about a pound of it on a baking tray in an oven for a couple of hours to make sure it was dry, then put in in a plastic box with the camera laid on top of some folded kitchen roll on it, before sealing the lot with a tight lid.

Next day showed some reduction in the fogging of the lens, but the electronic viewfinder was stll opaque.

Next day was a bit better.

On the third or fourth day, against all expectations the camera returned itself to full working order and is still in use.

The thing is to give the dessicant time to work and to use a large enough quantity to absorb the volume of moisture causing the fogging.
 
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Thanks, B´obbler, I only have two sachets of Silica Gel to hand, but your solution sounds sweet. I´ll find out where to find a greater quantity of the stuff. Great to hear your camera recovered fully!
 
Barred Wobbler said:
I had a camera that was badly (and I mean badly) fogged a couple of years ago. The fogging came about as a result of me falling on my arse in a pond and the camera had a very brief period of immersion. It packed in. There was fogging in the lens and the screen went kaput.

I let it dry naturally to get the worst off and thinking that it was beyond saving, but nothing was to be lost by trying I attempted to breath some life into it. I did this by utilising a quantity of loose silica gel that my wife had stored in the loft after going off a hobby of drying flowers.

I heated about a pound of it on a baking tray in an oven for a couple of hours to make sure it was dry, then put in in a plastic box with the camera laid on top of some folded kitchen roll on it, before sealing the lot with a tight lid.

Next day showed some reduction in the fogging of the lens, but the electronic viewfinder was stll opaque.

Next day was a bit better.

On the third or fourth day, against all expectations the camera returned itself to full working order and is still in use.

The thing is to give the dessicant time to work and to use a large enough quantity to absorb the volume of moisture causing the fogging.
Click to expand...

I think this is a good way for your advice to help with drying out. I have a large gun safe in my basement, and I have a dessicant in it and it requires
oven drying to properly dry out. I now have installed a small heater "goldenrod" to add heat to the safe and that helps keep things dry.

This is not small packets but a pound or more. So Sancho, I would look at getting some larger amounts of dessicant. Also low heat should work much in
the same way.

It may just take time and patience.

Jerry
 
Sancho - the Elite Custom 7x26 are remarkable optics for their size as you have discovered. But they aren't waterproof as you have also discovered. A damp jacket pocket would provide a moisture laiden environment for any binocular, rated water proof or not. Note that even the highly rated water proof alphas put a limit on depth of water, say 15 feet or so, when pressure becomes a significant variable.

Keeping your binoculars inside your jacket close to your body heat should not be a problem since the air ( made up of gases) expands slightly to create internal pressure.
Here in Montana, binoculars without tight seals can experience problems with internal condensation when brought from a very cold environment outside to inside room temperatures. For this reason experienced outdoorsman in Montana leave their optics outside (protected of course) so they don't experience thermal shock or have them in cases where temperature changes are more gradual. I'm talking about sub-freezing weather conditions. For fogging to occur, moisture must be present internally.

Out doors writers like to torture test optics, rifle scopes in particular. I've read where they take a rifle scope, put it in a tub of water, freeze the water into a block of ice, and then thaw out the block of ice in very warm water looking for tell tale signs of air leakage from the scope joints in the form of tiny bubbles. I can't imagine anyone doing that to binoculars, but some folks may actually do that. Not with my binoculars, I might add.

But your humidity is always high in Ireland, I believe, so the practice of placing your binoculars after use in a ziplock bag with a dessicant makes good sense.

By the way last week our local Rotary Club had a special presentation from members who toured Ireland this past fall. Very, very interesting. John
 
.........curious why my 8x30 Zeiss Oberkochen have been soaked in the rain but have never fogged up internally. I know they aren't waterproof. Maybe I didn't have room in my pocket to warm them up?
 
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