Protecting your camera, be it a SLR or a camcorder, when not in use for quite sometime is very important. Bringing down your precious camera out of the shelf for a family occasion or a vacation just to realize that the lens has been affected by fungus, is really very shocking.
What really affects your camera, more so the lenses, is humidity. Humidity, which causes the growth of fungus, is perhaps the worst enemy of our lenses. A little care in storing our precious camera goes in a long way to have long and nice memories with it.
This is especially important under Indian climatic conditions, where humidity is high.
When not in use store your camera (and the lenses if you have extra ones) in airtight containers. I prefer to use Tupperware containers, as they are truly airtight.
Put a small pack of reusable Sillica gel in the containers. The reusable Sillica gel are available at any decent camera shop. Do not use the ones that comes with the computer boxes (I mean the ones which are use-and-throw). They are of not much use.
Store the camera away from darkness - as less the light more the chance of fungus growing. So do not store your camera box in your most safest of almiras - that will protect it from theft but not fungus :-)
Almost every day (atleast couple of times in a week) expose the box to sunlight. The air within the box will get heated up once its there in the sun for sometime. You will see that the lid of the box to bulge up a bit as the air within expands. Open the lid and let the extra air out. Keep it in the sun for about 10 mins (depending on the intensity). Important thing is to let the air within get hot and keep things dry inside.
Every month check if the sillica gel (originally it will be blue in colour) has turned white. That means it has absorbed a lot of moisture. Bring it out and lightly fry it on the oven till it regains its blue colour. Once its blue, you can reuse it. Generally the sillica gels can be reused over a period of one year. After that get some ’’fresh’’ silica gel.
These small steps to protect your camera from fungus goes a long way to protect your pocket from burning and prevents a lot of heart break.
Happy Shooting :-)