Lately, I have been photographing a lot of temples. One thing that is quite common is incense smoke, which I was almost never around before. After shooting, I noticed my lens gets covered in white dust. It comes off with a brush but it sticks to the lens and I missed some, so a little was left for a day or so.
Does incense damage lenses? If so, would a clear protective filter provide adequate protection? It will obviously protect the front but I am wondering is the incense would enter other places such as in the zoom or focus ring and focus switch.
My camera body is weatherproof, and so are most (but not all) of my lenses.
Can it cause damage to the camera too?
Answer
There are reasons why broadcast studios, commercial film/video production studios, commercial photography studios, etc. have strict "no-smoking" policies and have had them for decades before the more recent trend to ban smoking in most public buildings as a public health issue: long term exposure to the byproducts of burning things can be severely damaging to photographic equipment and other sophisticated electronic devices.
It's not just about the dust. Most things that burn also have an oily substance that is heated and when it cools back down will form an oily film as it condenses on objects cooler than the air in which it is suspended. If you've ever cleaned picture glasses in a room used by a heavy smoker then you are familiar with the brown film of tar that coats everything and is difficult to clean and remove. Burning materials that include aromatic components almost certainly contain oils of various types to provide the scent.
It's not just your lenses, either. Semiconductor electronics are also very sensitive to dust which often has an electrostatic charge. One speck of dust in the just the right spot on a powered-up pc-board, particularly between two adjacent pins where a chip is soldered into a board, can be enough to fry the component or even the entire board.
Does incense damage lenses? If so, would a clear protective filter provide adequate protection?
A clear protective filter will protect the front surface of your lens from the effect of dust and smoke. But if the filter is present when you take photos the dust and smoke the filter has collected will affect your photos the same as if the dust and smoke were on the lens' front element. Additionally, the flat parallel surfaces of the filter may cause additional unwanted image degradation. This is especially the case if the temples in which you are shooting are dark with a few much brighter light sources such as candles or lanterns. In such an environment, ghosting is almost a given when using a flat filter on the front of your lens.
My camera body is weatherproof and so are most but not all of my lenses. Can it cause damage to the camera too?
It's not likely if the camera is only exposed to such an environment for short durations. The degree to which your camera is "weatherproof" will also play a part. (Unless it can be submerged in water indefinitely, a camera isn't truly "weatherproof", it's just "weather resistant.") The greater danger to most of the other parts of your camera would be if the camera were stored in such an environment for much longer periods of time.
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