Fungus on Ursa mini pro

After 4 months of storage in shelf , when I opened my Ursa mini pro it's protective glass just in front of the sensor got extensively fungal attacks, even I can't see pictures on flip out monitor, warranty period over, please give me a valuable advise,iam from India, regards Dr asok

I’m sure BMD can replace the sensor glass if that’s the only problem. Of course, you’ll be without the camera for a month I suspect given you don’t have a regional support centre close by. Call your regional support to discuss.


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Please give the name of good unit which can accommodate Ursa mini pro ,big Ursa,Canon can e 14.5-60 mm lens

I would just take it to a reputable camera service centre and have them do a regular sensor clean like it was any other DSLR.

Its just another sensor isnt it?

How does this happen? The fungus needs something to feed off of, is it the coating? If do, they may need to change the sensor glass coating to make it less edible.

You are probably going have to get more than the sensor glass clean as it will be growing well on whatever it can find, and can redrift back to the glass.

I have read silver is supposed to kill mold, and also read it doesn't. They could try silver atoms if it works. I have tried it extensively, but I see in some things the mold gets stuck in. The silver is very tricky because things can contaminate and largely deactivate the way it works. I have a chipboard desk cupboard, I've hut a few times and mold comes back. I was a bit surprised recently to see mold reasert itself within a month, but notice the mold was around the edge of where it was last time, so maybe I didn't spray wide enough, so it is just around the edges of what I did spray (don't spray it on your sensor glass or camera, there will be particles that interfere with the image , and the stuff interferes with electronics until its is cleaned out, and liquid vapor is one of the things that damages chips etc in the old days by gettjng through the pins). Silver atoms used in a professional coating will be a lot smaller than the light, and hopefully little issue.

A sensor glass is coated, so the mold growing on it will have possibly destroyed the coatings, so it needs replacing, not cleaning, which would remove the mold but not restore the damage to the glass. I would send the camera to BM for evaluation.
Cheers

Means, replacing the sensor?or sensor glass?iam from India,so should I send it to Australia or us? how much costs? please let me know, regards Dr asok

Our lenses and sungrasses have coatings. I wouldnt worry about the mold damaging the coating. Either way a local pro shop that does sensor cleans will tell you what needs to be done. They would come across this all the time and I'm sure many sensors have coatings.

They may still tell you to send it to BM but theres a chance its an easy fix and working right away.

I would just take it to a reputable camera service centre and have them do a regular sensor clean like it was any other DSLR.

Its just another sensor isnt it?

This is the sensor cover glass, not the sensor.

I imagine getting in touch with BMD would be the best answer. It can be easily replaced.

JB

I can only second getting a dry cabinet before something like this happens for everybody living in a humid area.
Mine is an Ailite (90l, about 150 $) and it kept my camera and lenses in good condition when living in Ubud (Bali) for a year. That place is so humid that your clothes show mold if you do not hang them in the sun as much as possible!

An alternative would be a small, closed room equipped with a dehumidifier. But don't take the cheap ones then, which work with a Peltier element. They seem to look cheaper initially, but in the long run they use too much power and don't last long. Get one which works with a compressor. If you are away from the place for extended periods, get one with a tube to drain the water to the outside.

Yeah, I agree with pretty much everyone on this thread, get the sensor glass replaced. You wouldn’t want to clean it “the best you can” only to miss some nearly invisible spots that end up regrowing and transferring to your favorite lens
And obviously BMD would be the best professionals to take care of it considering they built it. If that happened to my Mini I’d not trust my self or anyone else to fix it other than BMD.


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Thanks, now my Ursa4k v1 PL mount (big one) the glass in front of the sensor got attached by the fungus!!!!!

Contact BM support and ask the to find out how to treat the area to kill fungus spores in a way that won't damage components long term, before you go to anybody, so you can take the info with you, and hopefully find somebody who does it.

One of our cameras we brought to Kauai Hawaii was the original Pocket Cam. Within about a year over there, the glass covering the sensor developed a haze that was especially stronger on the outer edges.
We shipped it to BMD's Freemont CA USA service center and for about $50 they replaced the glass cover.
Worked just like new after their service.

I appreciate the advice about the dry cabinets which we will purchase.

But when I contacted bmd Singapore, they told me for Ursa mini pro,50 USD for diagnosis and 100 USD for replacing the glass, and for Ursa 4 k,50 USD for diagnosis and 125 USD for replacing the glass,! as my both camera got infected by fugus

That is not a bad price, replacing the sensor glass is useually a 1-hr minimum shop time repair, so $150 to $175, including the glass is a good price, you are only paying $100-125 for labor, $50 material cost. Fungus on a sensor glass is not a warranty repair. Having a glue or coating issue as previously described above, the OP came under the camera warranty. Also repair prices vary depending on the location, due to differences in labor costs.
Cheers

Dennis, my big Ursa 4k PL also got attacked by fungus, and when i approached service bmd Asia, Singapore, for repair,i asked that i shall send the turret for removing the glass in front of the sensor which is infected by the fungus for replacing the glass and service (as the Ursa PL is 7.5 kg,so difficult to transport from India), they told they want the whole Ursa camera for repair!,ur opinion?

You may be able to ask Blackmagic to send you a replacement filter and rubber retention ring. If you have fine hand skills, you could remove the old ring and replace the filter yourself. Putting the rubber ring back into its groove is tricky. If you don't have fine hand skills and no local camera technician is available, a good dentist should be able to do it if the method is described. The camera must be in a very clean environment. If you intend to try to repair it locally, let folk here know and we can perhaps coach you through it.

Thanks, but service bmd Singapore is not selling the glass filter out side! Can you help me to get the filter glass by giving me the address, thanks Dr Ashok, India

Please reply, regards Dr Ashok

Please reply, regards Dr Ashok

This is a user forum - you should contact BMD directly via support on the BMD website.

I know this is a user forum, there are lots of situation in this form to deal situation like mine, that is why i asked

Probably a dumb question but I gotta ask anyway. Did you try to clean it just to be sure its not a simple solution case? Maybe you're luck enough... Otherwise, its not a really big problem as you just need to change this glass which BMD should be very used to as it happnes since their first camera.

Will keeping the camera in a Pelican air tight case prevent molds?

I didn't tried to clean mould as it's extensively infected by moulds, but i can replace the glass filter in front of the sensor, but bmd Singapore is not selling parts(glass and rubber shield),i have to courier the whole big camera to bmd Singapore to change the glass filter!,do you have any idea to get the glass filter and rubber shield from anywhere?,

Ellory, good thought, you probably need something in the case with it to stop it. Drying packs are a basic idea, but not directly killing mold itself.


Guys, what anti mold strategies are there? These things are tricky, as a lot might cause damage to the camera and lens.

U mean volatile oil will remove the moulds?if so how to apply it?

No, NEVER apply volatile liquids, it will destroy/wreck coatings/lenses. I was trying to warn it was dangerous because it is a volatile liquid. Just the fumes I think would be bad for lenses. But a lot of mold strategies are like this. I used one fairly inert compound but it will have light scattering action, which I found on DVD's, and it stuffs around electronics until you clean the contamination off, it likely will chemically react and infiltrate with the water content, and, despite popular belief, I don't think it kills all mold (I make my own and have used it extensively). I'll mention this, because, BM could use the related technology in manufacturing coatings. The technology people are modt familiar with are Silver water compounds. Don't use them.
These tend to be unstable, in that they will bind/loose effectiveness from contamination quickly, and using them contaminates them. The basic one is ionic silver, with ultra small unstable charged particles. Colloidal silver proper, has bigger combinations of particles, or compounds. It resists contamination better, and people make it for oral use (the silver man syndrome often concerns super concentrates, high use with compounds and ionic silver). Another is mesosilver which is a super tight combination of around 9 silver atoms I think. It's very dark. Ionic is clear like water, and good colloidal is near perfectly clear with possibly a fine yellow tint. The bigger the particles the more the tint changes until it ties very dark. Meso however, is small, but dark.

Now, if they could coat thin consistent layer of silver atoms on a lenses and coat lens parts and lens barrel with a more sturdy compound, it may solve a lot of mold issues.

Another thing to keep mold down, is ozone generator. Ozone is a mildly poisonous gas (they use oxygen masks and tanks using it commercially. It makes you continuously violently cough so much you can't breath, even though you are no longer near it for a while). It is very reactive, and may destroy coatings and other things, but I have no experience with that, but it will also wreck other things. I have an industrial strength machine big enough to deodorize a warehouse. It will send metal Rusty, react with various polymers (casings for electronic parts maybe, vynel floors, I had a rubber stretch belt once and heard it drop within 5 minutes or do of starting the machine in a room I was decontaminating books. It just broke into peices). So, definitely you don't want to use it in concentration around equipment, but I wonder if using the lightest machine briefly on equipment might be safe. The smaller machines are around 1000 to about 3000 times less potent then my machine. So, could such a thing be used at the end of the day in a drying cabinet? It is something BM and lens manufacturers would have to test out. It's not something you want to try out on tens of thousands of dollars of lenses or cameras.

Thanks, Iam totally confused, so what should i do to eradicate this bledy fungus Sir?, regards Dr Ashok

Sorry. I described the danger and who would need to 'expertly' sort that technology out. Not us.

So, pretty much what you were trying to do, and a drying case.

I'm here asking if people know anything myself. I live in a bad area myself. But my cameras don't get into bad situations for fungus.

There are really only two ways to prevent this:

#1 keep everything dry, sealed case with some sort of agent to remove humidity.

#2 UV light. Not sure how the sensor will like getting does with high amounts of UV light. I'd certainly rig up a box with a UV light inside before I tried to shine the Sun in on the sensor. You can buy them for purifying water in fish tanks and ventilation systems. They are all over Ebay. No idea how long it needs to be exposed to kill the fungus.

NOTE: The UV light given off by these sterilization lamps is DANGEROUS! Do not look at it, do not expose your skin to it, just put it in a light tight box and let it do its work! The ozone given off by these lights can be corrosive, ozone breaks down into oxygen fairly easily and leaves a radical that wants to attach to other atoms. It may rust the fasteners, so do this stuff at own risk!

Also these fungus infections feed on the metals that make up the filters, you will most likely have spots/strips where the coating is gone, and this may effect your images.

If you are going to use this method, keep the light off the sensor, use lowest dose as needed, and really research what the light ozone may do to the sensor coatings and other parts before use. The little generators which use seal tubes and blow the air out, will gum up with a nitrogen based acid inside eventually and lower output and need to be replaced (often 10-27mw used in fish tanks and to sterilise etc fruit and vegetables). The lights are probably a good idea, as you won't be getting this effect, and it probably is easy to rig. If there is a low fire risk led version you could rig safely in a case it could circulate air, but airlines shouldn't allow the battery of course.