Taking your camera gear on holiday

If you are heading to the beach with your camera this summer, you will no doubt be concerned about protecting your kit from both sand and water.

While dropping your camera in water may seem a more obvious concern, sand can cause just as much damage, and may not even be immediately noticeable.

Wind can cause fine sand particles to become airborne where they can scratch the surface of a camera’s lens and cause damage to the lens coating. For this reason it is worth investing in a UV or skylight filter, which will protect the surface of your lens with minimal effect on exposure. Of course, should the filter become damaged it will need replacing, but the cost will be a fraction of that needed to replace a lens.

A lens hood is also a good idea. Not only will it help reduce lens flare on a sunny day, but it will also offer a degree of protection from side winds containing sand or dust that might damage the front element of a lens.

However, small grains of sand can get just about everywhere, including inside your camera. It is therefore vital to change lenses, batteries and memory cards in a clean environment to minimise this risk. Ideally, this should be done indoors, but the inside of a bag or a car will suffice.

A good temporary cover for an SLR on a beach is a large transparent freezer/sandwich bag. Simply place your camera in the bag, with the lens pointing towards the opening, and then seal the bag around the lens. This can be done using either the bag’s own sealing mechanism or by taping the bag to a lens hood.

By Richard Sibley