Desiccant for Moravian G2 8300

[Xilman]

I recently purchased a second-hand Moravian G2 8300 camera. The desiccant chamber is empty. The previous owner had never filled it and TFM is rather reticent as to what goes in there. It says silca gel, of which I have plenty in stock, but nothing about whether it has to be contained in some capsule (like my old SBIG of years past) or whether loose granules (of what coarseness?) are poured directly into the chamber.

Can anyone enlighten me please?

 

[Oddsocks]

Moravian didn’t give any particular desiccant recommendations for those older cameras, even the newer model manuals don’t have a specification however >this< manual for the C5 series does at least have a photo (see pages 55-57) of what appear to be regular orange colour-change silica gel desiccant beads.

SBIG and QSI cameras used a micro-sieve desiccant that was pre-filled and sealed in a removable plug and had to be baked dry without physically unpacking the desiccant from the plug.

If you look at >page 59 of the G2 8300 manual< Moravian state that the coin-cover over the desiccant chamber is unscrewed, the old desiccant poured out and new desiccant poured in, and that there is fine gauze filter at the bottom of the chamber that prevents dust entering the chamber. So it would appear that you just need to fill the chamber with beads, but don’t overfill the chamber or you risk damaging the gauze filter when you screw the cover back in place.

Micro-sieve desiccant beads are more efficient (and more expensive) than silica gel beads but very dusty in comparison and the chamber gauze filter in the camera might not be fine enough to catch the tiny dust particles from typical micro-sieve desiccant beads.

Since Moravian don’t mention micro-sieve desiccants at all it’s probably best to stick to regular colour-change silica gel beads of 2mm-4mm diameter (the bead size supplied with QHY cameras for their cameras external fitted drying tubes are 3.6mm diameter).

HTH.

Edited Tuesday at 15:32 by Oddsocks