Humidity! Ugh! by ericb

So, you find yourself on a short nature hike, early in the morning in July in South Carolina and just 5 or 10 minutes after leaving the cool, air conditioned house, you decide you need to change lenses. No problem. Off comes the lens you don’t need. Then, as you are installing the right lens, you see it – condensation – on the lens surfaces, the viewfinder, mirror, etc. Now what? The lighting is perfect RIGHT NOW. You wait to see if it dries up. Nope. Blow on it? Doesn’t work. Use the canned air to blow on it? Uh-uh. That comes out of the can cold and adds to the problem. Lense tissue? Well, that almost works, but the cloud keeps coming back. Finally, after waiting, pondering, blowing and wiping, using the lens tissue with some cleaning fluid does the trick and you put the lens on real fast, hoping for success.

So, all you pros out there, what’s the best answer? I realize that part of the issue is giving the equipment time to warm up and match the surrounding air temperature so that the humidity doesn’t condense on the glass surfaces. But is there a good way to get fast results when you don’t want to wait or don’t have time?