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IMO:
1. If your equipment can periodically (more or less daily) spend time in an air conditioned environment, or even laid out indoors on a table in a relatively airy and dry indoor environment that is not air conditioned but where the air is free to circulate around it, I think you can get by without desiccant. The worst thing you can do is to leave everything sealed up in your camera bag where air cannot circulate.
2. If you are staying within in dense a jungle/rainforest environment, even in a permanent structure for three continuous weeks, I would use a desiccant as I described earlier to let your equipment dry out overnight. Those conditions are very close to 100% RH. I have had condensation form on the viewfinder eyepiece of cameras that were at ambient temperature and had not been in any air conditioned environment, when I put them up to my eye. In order to use them I had to keep a gap between my eye and the eyepiece for the whole evening, so it was not a matter of letting the camera come to ambient temperature.
A few continuous days without drying things out is no big deal, but problems start to happen, including intermittent problems with camera electronics, after longer periods. Dealing with desiccants, is a hassle, especially on a trip, due to the need to monitor them and spend hours "recharging" them when they become saturated. I consider them something of a last resort, but the only option under some circumstances. FWIW, silica desiccants can be dried in a microwave oven or even in a pan over a fire if necessary, but there is no good way to control the temperature in either of those cases. I'm pretty sure they get too hot and dry out on the surface of the beads more than the interior of the beads and are thus not fully "recharged". Just just watch the bead color and when they indicate "dry" let them cool off and put them in a sealed bag or container before they are completely cool (but not so hot they melt the bag/container). If you let them completely cool they will begin to take on moisture immediately.
Good luck!
Edited on May 11, 2022 at 09:29 AM · View previous versions
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