At 09:08 PM 2/17/00 -0600, Tom Scales wrote:
[snip]
>I would appreciate (offline perhaps) suggestions from list members for how
>they display their treasures. I'm thinking a bookcase, maybe glass doors,
>but am worried about fungus, etc.
Tom:
The best way to beat fungus is to never give the spores a chance to multiply.
(You *cannot* prevent spores from entering your equipment in the first place.
Spores are ubiquitous.) There are one of two strategies in this regard:
1. Bombard your equipment with UVA and UVB on occasion, making sure that the UV
gets to the innards of each lens. Over a long period of time, this will
probably start damaging various bits of your equipment.
2. When not being used, store your lenses etc. in an environment where the
relative humidity is consistently less than 40% (almost a magic minimum amount
for spores to multiply).
You can also combine the two strategies above.
Various List members have weighed in on this issue in the past. The UV route
strikes me as too much of a pain in the ass, and besides, I have pragmatic
experience with the low humidity route that tells me it works (I stored a Zuiko
100mm/2.0 lens in a thick plastic bag with silica gel for ten years in a cold,
damp, dark basement; when I finally dug it out to start using it again, it was
still clear -- on the other hand, filters stored in such conditions but without
silica gel were clouded over with fungus on both surfaces [which were easily
and completely cleaned with -- of all things -- Windex and toilet paper]).
Everything OM-related I own is stored in freezer-strength or
industrial-strength plastic bags with silica gel packets when not being used.
Including the filters, I might add. ;-) (I suspect that the Windex and toilet
paper trick, while effective, would noticeably damage the surfaces of the
filters over time -- thus, the less they need to be cleaned, the better...).
Garth
"A bad day doing photography is better
than a good day doing just about
anything else."
The Unofficial Olympus Web Photo Gallery at:
http://www.taiga.ca/~gallery/
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