Do cameras die in hot cars?

Carlb · Mar 17, 2009

On many summer days in this part of the world, the temperature in a locked car can reach anything between 50 and 60 degrees Celcius.

So if I leave a loaded camera in my car, out of direct sunlight and in the footwell, on these days, will it be OK or will it get fried. What sort of damage could it suffer? I wouldnt leave my good camera in the car. It's moat likely to be a K1000 (or something else that wont leave me heart-broken if it or the car got stolen) loaded with some colour film for those opportunities that turn up while youre on the road. I assume that the extreme heat wouldnt do the film in the camera much good but apart from that, will it be OK? Would storing everything in a cooler bag make any difference?

nyoung · Mar 17, 2009

The camera won't "die" from the heat.

Film might and might not.

Personally, I've had to leave a lot of film in cars in the American desert with no huge loss of image quality.

The insulated cooler bag is a very good idea.

Also, storing it as low in the car as possible is important as well - hot air rises and the temperature in the floorboard will be significantly lower than in the "greenhouse" at your head level.

In an airconditioned car, I have parked with the inside temp around 70 F and left the camera bag under a white pillow on the seat.

When I returned, about three hours later, the camera was still cool to the touch even though the air temp in the top of the compartment was well over 100 F.

Anscojohn · Mar 17, 2009

A cooler is a must. If the car is too hot for you, it is too hot for a camera. The lube can flow; the aperture blades can warp. The glue holding the covering on can soften. Trust me.

chriscrawfordphoto · Mar 18, 2009

Heat can also damage any electronics, such as a meter or an electronic shutter. I left a handheld meter, a Sekonic L-398 Studio Deluxe, in a car in TEXAS in the summer for a mere one hour and it died completely. Even here in northern Indiana cars get hot enough inside to kill cameras.

srs5694 · Mar 18, 2009

You might try measuring the temperature in the cabin and in the trunk. The cabin temperature rises, in part, because of a greenhouse effect -- there's a lot of glass in cars, so a lot of sunlight gets in and relatively little heat can get out. The trunk doesn't have that problem -- but of course it's adjacent to the cabin, so I don't really know how much cooler it would be in the trunk than in the cabin. Hence my suggestion to measure it with a pair of thermometers.

Poisson Du Jour · Mar 18, 2009

I strongly suspect that heat would cause distortion of the mirror box, discolouration (blacking out) of the LCD and possible battery leakage among other things.

No camera is infallible to extremes of temperature.

MattKing · Mar 18, 2009

Even if they don't die, surely they suffer!

Matt

budrichard · Mar 18, 2009

Cameras, electronics, firearms, purses etc are NEVER left in vehicles to avoid theft.
That said, you bet high temps are going to affect your camera, both physically and electronically..-Dick

eddym · Mar 18, 2009

I would leave it in a small cooler, maybe with a "cold pack" in it.

Shangheye · Mar 18, 2009

I have no idea about all cameras...but I definitely killed a Seagull (TLR!) in a car that got up as hot as 50C and that was when it was in a leather case. The metal must have expanded and the focusing mechanism moved so far foreward it possped out of the body and jammed....:rolleyes:

I now never leave a camera in the car...

John Koehrer · Mar 18, 2009

Carlb said:
On many summer days in this part of the world, the temperature in a locked car can reach anything between 50 and 60 degrees Celcius.

Not that it makes a whole lot of difference because 50-60C is the same all over the world but, where is this part of the world?

Prest_400 · Mar 18, 2009

budrichard said:
Cameras, electronics, firearms, purses etc are NEVER left in vehicles to avoid theft.
That said, you bet high temps are going to affect your camera, both physically and electronically..-Dick

Unless winter, I would not leave any camera inside a car.
They can get into the car if they want, I prefer to take everything valuable with me.

Poisson, where did you see that? Ouch.

Christopher Walrath · Mar 18, 2009

I would also be concerned about the light seals.

Carlb · Mar 18, 2009

John Koehrer said:
Not that it makes a whole lot of difference because 50-60C is the same all over the world but, where is this part of the world?

Perth, Australia

Thanks for all the replies. I was mailny curious to see if I could just leave the camera in the car all year round but it sounds like it will be best to take it out of the car during the warmer months and keep a cooler bag handy for those trips on warm days when I do decide to take it with me.

Galah · Mar 18, 2009

Carlb said:
Perth, Australia

...and keep a cooler bag handy for those trips on warm days when I do decide to take it with me.

The cooler bag would also provide good "padding" for the camera against jolting on rough roads and bumping against other items in the car (not to mention dust and moisture protection).

Ektagraphic · Mar 18, 2009

I don't reccomend it...I think the film will suffer more than the camera...

EASmithV · Mar 18, 2009

It might melt a Holga...

GeorgeDexter · Mar 19, 2009

Heat is especially bad for lenses. As Anscojohn mentioned, lubricants get less vicous at high temperatures and start to bleed into areas they aren't supposed to be in. If helicoid grease gets into your aperture blades on an SLR lens, you can forget about your lens stopping down properly. This will cause overexposure of your images, unless you always shoot wide open. I can only guess that there are lubricants in other areas of the camera, too. If I need to leave a camera in the car, I put it in a dry cooler in the trunk. The trunk stays cooler than the rest of the car, and the cooler is insulated, so it should maintain a lower internal temp than the rest of the trunk. Even in a cooler, though, the inside temperature will eventually rise to the ambient temperature of the trunk. I do not put ice in my cooler. You do not want to take a camera from a cold environment into a warmer one, especially if there's humidity. This will cause condensation, which is probably faster and more deadly to electronics than heat.

GeorgeDexter · Mar 19, 2009

And even a few hours of exposure to heat over 50c will damage your film.

Poisson Du Jour · Mar 19, 2009

GeorgeDexter said:
And even a few hours of exposure to heat over 50c will damage your film.

Film is damaged long before 50°c i.e. casts, streaks on emulsion where film rails contact etc. Besides all this, why would you leave a camera in a hot car, or anything of value in a car? Remove it. Only tempts thieves anyway.

Kevin Caulfield · Mar 19, 2009

I agree with the fish.

bobwysiwyg · Mar 19, 2009

For whatever it might be worth, it's not uncommon for owner manuals today to indicate operating temperature ranges are best kept between 0C-40C which means the high-end is 104F which could easily be exceeded in a closed car in the sun. I always assumed the manufacturer had reasons for this limitation and try to observe it.

Sirius Glass · Mar 19, 2009

GeorgeDexter said:
Heat is especially bad for lenses. As Anscojohn mentioned, lubricants get less vicous at high temperatures and start to bleed into areas they aren't supposed to be in. If helicoid grease gets into your aperture blades on an SLR lens, you can forget about your lens stopping down properly. This will cause overexposure of your images, unless you always shoot wide open. I can only guess that there are lubricants in other areas of the camera, too. If I need to leave a camera in the car, I put it in a dry cooler in the trunk. The trunk stays cooler than the rest of the car, and the cooler is insulated, so it should maintain a lower internal temp than the rest of the trunk. Even in a cooler, though, the inside temperature will eventually rise to the ambient temperature of the trunk. I do not put ice in my cooler. You do not want to take a camera from a cold environment into a warmer one, especially if there's humidity. This will cause condensation, which is probably faster and more deadly to electronics than heat.

My experience was that a very good lens was ruined because the lubricants vaporized and plated out on the lens surfaces. I could not find someone to clean the lens at the time so I ended up throwing it out.

Steve

Galah · Mar 19, 2009

Sirius Glass said:
My experience was that a very good lens was ruined because the lubricants vaporized and plated out on the lens surfaces. I could not find someone to clean the lens at the time so I ended up throwing it out.

Steve

This could have been an opportunity to try a bit of DIY lens cleaning: what did you have to lose?

Sirius Glass · Mar 19, 2009

Galah said:
This could have been an opportunity to try a bit of DIY lens cleaning: what did you have to lose?

I did not have the facilities to realign the lenses for starters. The list went on ...

Steve

Do cameras die in hot cars?

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