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Archive 2009 · Please Delete

Kingfishphoto
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p.2 #1 · Please Delete

Is there a way to kill or stop fungus from growing? I have a lens with it(seperated from others) , rather like the soft, wierd, photos with it. In other words, can i kill or stop it from spreading to camera body, other lenses ?

Oct 11, 2009 at 05:55 PM

imjustintime
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p.2 #2 · Please Delete

Leave it in the sunshine or exposed to a UV light. It will kill the fungus, but you still have to get it cleaned.

Oct 11, 2009 at 06:16 PM

olyacme
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p.2 #3 · Please Delete

Kingfishphoto wrote:
Is there a way to kill or stop fungus from growing? I have a lens with it(seperated from others) , rather like the soft, wierd, photos with it. In other words, can i kill or stop it from spreading to camera body, other lenses ?

Strong UV light will only kill the fungus you can see. If it's on the glass, it's a given it's elsewhere in the lens as well, and will simply move back when favourable conditions return.

You can put it into suspended animation by depriving it of moisture, but save for things that would be injurious to the lens, you cannot completely kill the fungus without disassembling and cleaning each part of the lens and replacing all its lubrication. Even if you do go to this effort, you've only killed one fungus.

Spores constantly enter lenses; they're mostly microscopic and molds and fungi produce them by the billions. There is no practical way to keep lenses from hoovering them up. If one lands somewhere that supplies both food (such as films spread by many greases) and moisture (such as from high humidity), it will grow. The digestive enzymes and acids these fungi release as they break down their food are what damage coatings.

I would cringe about putting an obviously infested lens in with pristine ones, but this is probably just a psychological issue. For the threat to be real, it would require that the infected lens has nurtured its fungus so well that it's been able to put up fruiting bodies, and even then one spore and a million spores are equivalent in this situation. It shouldn't matter...

The most practical way to prevent fungal damage of lenses is to keep them in a low humidity environment.

/Acme

Oct 11, 2009 at 07:25 PM

Booone0
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p.2 #4 · Please Delete

Sorry for the slightly OT:

Acme - not sure if this applies directly to the fungus typically affecting camera gear, but it might help to know that many microorganisms sporulate in response to adverse conditions - ie, low moisture or lack of food.

Not sure if it would be enough, but I can see how (hypothetically) storing fungus-infected gear in the presence of "clean" gear could increase the chance of the clean gear developing fungus when conditions become favorable - such as a few days/weeks in a humid environment.

Oct 15, 2009 at 05:52 PM

Grenache
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p.2 #5 · Please Delete

Bacteria have doubling times of a few minutes to hours. Fungi from an hour or so to days, depending on conditions. I know some one who went to the Caribbean for a weekend and by the time they got back home, they had visible fungal growth on the inner rim of their lenses.

Humidity = trouble.

Does not appear to be your fault.

Keep in mind that dessicant sacks like what items often ship with last about a day in humid conditions. Perhaps a week in dry winter.

To keep humidity out of your gear, you need to constantly recharge (dry out) the dessicant pellets. Many containers are available for this approach. Amazon sells several metal tray kinds that you simply pop in an oven at 300 degrees for a few hours when the pellets turn color.

Too bad. The camera looked great at time of sale.

Jim

P.S. Hey, was Katrina your fault too? It is equally likely.

Oct 16, 2009 at 08:08 AM

olyacme
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p.2 #6 · Please Delete

Booone0 wrote:
Acme - not sure if this applies directly to the fungus typically affecting camera gear, but it might help to know that many microorganisms sporulate in response to adverse conditions - ie, low moisture or lack of food.

That's a good point, but I don't think the kind of infestations we commonly see are anywhere close to being ready to fruit. We're usually just looking at a starving, nascent organism, barely eking out an existence in what's really an inhospitable environment. I've not yet seen one that seemed remotely ready lift itself up and sporulate.

Booone0 wrote:
Not sure if it would be enough, but I can see how (hypothetically) storing fungus-infected gear in the presence of "clean" gear could increase the chance of the clean gear developing fungus when conditions become favorable - such as a few days/weeks in a humid environment.

I still think this is an emotional issue more than anything. First, most infected lenses are not fargone enough to be producing spores; surely the primary infection vector. Second, even if a woefully infected lens is cranking out spores nearby, they're only going to add to those that constantly blow in from other sources. Given that in suitable conditions it only takes one spore to compromise a lens, even a great increase in the number of spores entering the lenses should make no difference to the rate of infection.

Put differently - if it's humid and there's something to eat, all your equipment is going to be visibly infected soon enough - quarantine of spore-generating lenses or no.

/Acme

Edited on Oct 16, 2009 at 01:16 PM · View previous versions

Oct 16, 2009 at 09:53 AM

jay tieger
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p.2 #7 · Please Delete

olyacme wrote:

I still think this [fungus] is an emotional issue more than anything.
/Acme

Yup....but still, that emotion keeps my one lens (105/2.5 AI-S Nikkor) with a bit of it off to the side....to be on the safe side...outside the bag that holds the rest of my gear...

Oct 16, 2009 at 12:39 PM

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