I just bought a new dry box to store camera gear and I’m not sure if it’s faulty or I’ve done something wrong. So before I contact the store to get a replacement, let’s see if anyone has any ideas.
Mrs cfi said that the only install info in the manual (which was a single sheet of double-sided paper only in Chinese) was to turn it on and leave it running empty for 12 hours. Did that. Then put stuff in. It should be set to keep it around 40%, but it doesn’t seem to get below 55% so far. It read 60% all day yesterday, so I guess that’s an improvement of sorts.
Any ideas? Does it just take a really long time to get to the desired level, is it faulty or did I miss something in the install?
Its been hellishly humid for the last few days. Maybe that’s why. If yours is like mine (glass-fronted, brown box with a gauge on the top right corner) there’s nothing to adjust. It either works or it doesn’t. Mine reads 42%. Give it another day or two.
Did you measure the humidity in the room you placed it? Maybe just too humid at the moment to get it quick down or too much sweat on the equipment from the last shoots.
Other than that it should either work or not, the simpler models don’t have anything to set or adjust. Another thing can be that the meassuring device isn’t that exact, some differ by +/- 10%…
[quote=“mingshah”]Did you measure the humidity in the room you placed it? Maybe just too humid at the moment to get it quick down or too much sweat on the equipment from the last shoots.
Other than that it should either work or not, the simpler models don’t have anything to set or adjust. Another thing can be that the meassuring device isn’t that exact, some differ by +/- 10%…[/quote]
It’s probably as Sandy said - too humid when I plugged it in.
Most of these dry cabinets work with a very simple method of sealing objects inside a box containing dessicant material. The dessicant attracts moisture which slowly draws it out of the box until the dessicant is saturated, in which case the cabinet should have some way of voiding the trapped moisture through heating/evaporation.
The problem with this method in a cheaper cabinet is that the voiding process does not work very well, and neither does the dessicant. A good percentage of the trapped moisture gets released back into the cabinet which means a 20% drop in humidity can take days or weeks.
We use a larger version of these for storing paper so it doesn’t jam up the printing press. They are good at keeping things dry for long periods but they are not much good for extracting moisture quickly, so usually we have to use some other active and more energy intensive process (IR baking) to get the paper dry before putting it into dry storage.
If you want to help out the dry cabinet you can put a box of silica or other dessicant in there (available at supermarkets for pennies). Make sure you take the extra dessicant out once it’s saturated with water (it will turn into a liquid goo) or you will just be cycling moisture back into the cabinet.
Thanks llary. It’s down around 45% now, just took longer than I was lead to believe. The packaging it came with seemed to suggest it’d only take a few hours.
I have a Canon 400D and a few lenses, I have seen dry boxes sold in various stores, are they really required for photography? I mean I don’t see anyone putting their canon powershot or Sony Cybershots into a dry box…
