I tried searching for a while, but couldn't come up with much. I deer hunt in northern Michigan and usually wear a face mask or balaclava most of the time. The problem I have is my binoculars fogging up as I'm looking through them. This happens due to my warm breath. They do "unfog" after a minute or so, but its so annoying, that I don't use the binos as often as I probably should. I've tried holding my breath some, putting anti-fog on the lenses, etc..., but nothing seems to work effectively. How do you guys that hunt in the cold make this work? If it matters, I don't wear any glasses when hunting.

Thanks.

toothpaste. wipe on, wipe off.

Keep them inside your coat, if they are warm when you pull them out your breath won't condense on them.

I've tried two products that seem to help quite a bit with this. One is Fog Zero and the other is Clarity DeFog-it. Both are safe for sport optics.

Toothpaste usually contains an abrasive. May be harmless as a defogging agent but I would avoid it because there are safer, liquid based defogging concoctions available. Dive shops usually have one or two products on the shelf.

Sage advise. I would never use anything abrasive on coated optics

Dawn dish soap.

Yeah, Dawn will help, as will several commericial equivalents, some of which may be repackaged Dawn. But they also tend to compromise the optics slightly. This happens because the added layer doesn't function like another lens coating. Instead it tends to scatter light.

Other than not breathing on your binoculars, the best solution is to buy binoculars with a built-in moisture-resistant lens coating. Some older coatings had the same disadvantage as Dawn or other liquid coatings, but the recent built-in coatings don't compromise the view, since they're engineered to work with the other lens coatings. Bushnell's Rainguard is a good example.

Mule Deer,

How would classify Rain-X? More in the Dawn or in the Rainguard camp?

Clarity De Fog it is hands down the best I've used.

I put it on glasses and SCBA masks at teh fire dept and goggles... we fog up quick in fire situations... its the only thing that comes close to being reliable.... A shame its as high as it is, but I"m going to buy another 50 or so dollars worth of it shortly... running low.

I took this advice and so far it seems to be good to go.

If the rubber eyecups (if present) are extended fold them down and get a cold air space between your eyes and the glass.

Rain-X is more is the melt your lens coatings off group.

Yikes!

Did this happen to your optics?

Don't wear a balaclava while you're glassing.



Travis

No. Rain-X though is not safe for coated optics. Says so right on the bottle.

OK. Thanks.

For glassing in the cold and dealing with breath, you pretty much just have to learn a conscious habit of blowing down and away on the exhale. You can't just let the warm breath float around your face. Blow it out and down, away from you.

Fogging? You need to stop watching things through the neighbor's windows for a starter.

No problem with that here. Neighbor has a figure like Humpty Dumpty.

Blowing down and away from your face is kinda hard to do when wearing a balaclava.

Our winter prone league matches generally start in March. I wear a balaclava to keep the windchill off of my face. Warm air leaks out around my nose and up into my shooting glasses causing them to fog up. I tried the dawn trick and it worked like a charm. I can take my glasses off, they'll cool off and not fog up when I put them back on once they're treated.

Ordered some Clarity Defog-it with expedited shipping, and used it today and Weds on my binoculars while hunting.

Makes a huge difference. Was having significant problems with them fogging up earlier in the week, reduced to no fogging. GREAT TIP.

This reminds me of a story from back around my junior year in High School. I had a mixed bunch of friends who used to regularly come over on Saturday night to hang out.

A few years previous to this, a family had moved in on the street. The mother was a real piece of work. She was moderately attractive, and used to harass the neighbor boys sexually. It was all talk, but was filled with a lot of innuendo. You could tell she was just playing you. She also had this habit of undressing with the shades up.

So here it is 2155 ET, we'd just finished listening to my new copy of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. I jump up and start handing out binos, telescopes-- whatever I could scrounge up, and we all ran to the window to watch Misses C. take her clothes off. Ours was the house at the end of the Cul-de-Sac. Her's was a few doors up with the side facing our front.

At 2201 ET the show began. It lasted less than a minute, because even at 100 yards, she could see a dozen high-schoolers plastered across our upstairs windows.

Thanks, Misses C., wherever you are. That was a heck of a show.

With a dozen high schoolers watching her undress...did your binoculars fog up?

I would agree. DeFog-it has worked great so far this year. RDFinn sent me a sample to try, and he was correct in that it is a great product. I had been using Parker's Perfect, which is good, but this DeFog-it stuff is better. Thanks again RD.

To be honest, she was such a odd duck, I really never thought of her that way. She was just the crazy lady that talked dirty up the street to me.

Besides, if I remember, there was quite a bit of steam being generated right there in my room. I had two future steadies in that group at the windows. One I ended up getting engaged to after college. The other I went out with on prom night.

Like Bushrat said. Keep them warmer than the ambient air, and don't breath on them as they're coming into use. One reason I gave up my big 7 x 50's and went to pocket size versions.

if we find something better than de fog it I sure want to know.. 40 bucks worth ordered yesterday again.

They both work very well.FogZero is fast and easy to apply in the field, but from my limited testing, they seem to work about the same preventing on the oculars of bino's. Just remember, this isn't the same as the hydro coatings used by makers such as Bushnell, Zeiss, Leica, Steiner and Meopta that repels water/snow from sticking to the lens and provides an extra layer of durability as well. This stuff just helps (quite a bit) prevent fogging from either breathing on a lens or from your skin/face temperature causing fog to accumulate.

Glad that stuff helped out JG. The other stuff that you tried, like Parkers, leaves a slight film behind that is visible, and I'm sure that doesn't help the view through bino's especially. Perhaps you might not see it as much through a scope, but why bother when you have newer products that don't leave a visible film. Same goes for those anti-fog cloth wipes. They too leave behind a film.

Glad it helped.

If you do a little search on Ebay, you can find Fog Zero for about $15-16 shipped.


Try this guy. Shipping was fast.


[u][color:#000099][size:14pt]Fog Zero[/size][/color][/u]