Is a dry box with silica gel good enough to keep lenses from fungus?

[keithwee]

As long as the crystals don't come out of the bag and then get onto your food, and then you actually eat it, it is perfectly safe.

Bro , pls don't ever use the same microwave for food and silica gel. The savings ain't worth it.

I'm ok with the idea of anyone using silica gel instead and I think it's perfectly ok too, so long as one doesn't find the re-drying process bothersome and one knows what one is doing.

For newbies though , my take is always a dry cabinet instead ; easy and lasting with the cost spread out over a few years.

 

[coolhirako]

I dont understand people, spend so much on gears and cant squeeze a bit more for a dry cabinet

 

[nitewalk]

Aiya just get a dry cabinet turn it on 24/7. You can get a dry cab for like slightly over 100 depending on your needs, and i dont think there was a bill shock for the usage of electricity. And your stuff just put in take out. Really much more convenient.

 

[Octarine]

The smallest dry cabinets have power consumption rated as 5W. With 24x7 operations, what are the monthly costs? Simple Math now:
5W * 24h * 30.5d = 3.66kWh, using current home tariffs of SGD 0.2568 / kWh this gives whopping 94 cents additionally on the utility bill. For comparison: a night with aircon is easily more than this.

 

[catchlights]

back to the original question from TS, short answer is yes, but how long can a photographer keep up with the maintenance chores?
if he shoot often, so the silica gel will turn pink much sooner because the opening and closing of drybox, than he have to "cook" the silica gel more often,
if he don't shoot often, he might forgotten about it totally.
don't forget, once the camera/lenses get infected by fungus, whatever money he saves on the drybox method will be totally wipe out. if he try to sell away the fungus infected, nobody will want the camera/lenses even it is dirt cheap.

instead of cooking the silica gel and maintaining humidity level in the drybox.
why don't put the efforts on some other better way?
so, why don't just buy a dry cabinet and be done with it?
the dry cabinet running this fully automatic, you can go out shoot and more photos more often.

 

[keithwee]

TS seems to have MIA-ed. I feel a lot of good advice has been given and sufficient for TS to make a conscious decision. Probably time to move on.