Hey Designers! 💙👋
I got my hands on three of Ruggard’s electronic dry cabinets—the 80L model with the fingerprint lock, the smaller 30L, and the big 125L. After spending some time experimenting with all three, I wanted to share what they do and why I think they’re worth considering, especially if you live in a humid climate!
Why humidity matters for camera gear
Fungus can start growing on lens glass once relative humidity stays above roughly 60% for a while. The generally recommended range for storing camera gear is 40 to 50%. In a lot of homes, especially in coastal or Southern climates, indoor humidity sits above that line for months of the year without anyone noticing.
Camera bags don't help much here. They're dark and sealed with very little airflow, so they tend to hold whatever moisture is already inside.
The tricky part is that fungus damage is slow and quiet. There's nothing to see at first. Then one day you hold a lens up to the light and find a faint web pattern starting at the edge of an element. If it's caught early it can sometimes be cleaned, but once it's etched the coating, the marks are permanent.
I mention all this because I kept my gear in bags on a shelf for years and never thought about it! Most people I know do the same. It's an easy thing to overlook.
How the cabinets work
Ruggard's EDC line uses what they call a TE Cooling Wafer, which is a thermoelectric dehumidifier. There's no compressor, no fan, and no water tray to empty. There's also nothing to recharge, unlike silica gel packs, which need to be dried out in an oven every few weeks.
The cabinets are completely silent, since nothing inside them moves.
You set your target humidity on the touchscreen anywhere from 35% to 60%. It reaches the target in one to three hours and then holds it steady.
One thing I learned while reading up on this: drier isn't automatically better. Below the mid 30s, lens lubricants, rubber seals and adhesives can start to dry out. Silica gel doesn't have a lower limit, it just keeps absorbing until it's saturated. A cabinet holds a specific number, which I think is the real advantage. I set mine to 45% and it stays there.
Power draw on the 80L is under 8 watts, so running one around the clock costs very little over a year.
The door is sealed glass with a rubber gasket, so humidity stays in and dust stays out, and you can see everything inside without opening it. There's an LED light inside (It's my favorite part haha) The shelves are adjustable and lined with foam, so heavier lenses can have their own level and smaller ones don't slide around.
All three run on 110 to 240Â volts.
The 80L with the fingerprint lock
This is the bigger of the two, at 2.8 cubic feet. It fits two bodies, a full set of lenses, batteries, filters, a gimbal, a monitor and an audio bag with room to spare. It weighs 29.5 lb, so it's worth picking a permanent spot for it.
The fingerprint lock stores up to 20 prints and can run in manual or automatic mode. In automatic mode the door locks itself as soon as it closes. I've found that useful, because the easiest way to lose the humidity setting is leaving the door open while packing, and a self-locking door takes that off my mind.
The 30L for a desk or shelf
The 30L is 1.1 cubic feet and 14.3 lb, so it fits comfortably on a desk or bookshelf. It holds a body with a lens attached, two or three more lenses, batteries and cards. For a lot of setups that covers everything, and it's the more affordable way to get started with controlled storage.
It also works well alongside a bigger cabinet. I can keep my everyday camera and lenses in the 30L and everything else in the 80L, so the big one only gets opened when I actually need something from it.
It uses the same TE wafer, the same 35 to 60% range and the same touchscreen. The difference is a combination lock instead of the fingerprint reader.
The 125L for a full kit
The 125L is the floor-standing one. At about 4.4 cubic feet it's roughly four times the 30L, and in practice that's the difference between storing your favorite lenses and storing everything you own: multiple bodies, a full lens lineup, a cinema camera body, plus batteries, filters and audio.
It comes with four adjustable sliding shelves. The brackets move, so a long telephoto can have its own level, and each shelf has foam padding plus a contoured liner shaped for lenses so they don't roll around. The sliding action is the part I'd underrate on paper. Pulling a shelf out instead of reaching into the back means the door is open for seconds instead of a minute, which is what keeps the humidity where you set it.
It uses the same TE wafer, the same 35 to 60% range and the same touchscreen as the other two, with a three-digit combination lock like the 30L. There are two leveling feet underneath, which matter on a cabinet this tall. In the box: the cabinet, four shelves with eight brackets, four foam liners plus the contoured liner, a lock pin, the power supply and the manual, with the same limited five-year warranty.
If you're deciding between them: the 30L is the easy entry point, the 80L is the sweet spot for most kits, and the 125L is the one to get if your gear has already outgrown a shelf and you have the floor space. Gear collections tend to grow, and extra room is nice to have!
When a dry cabinet makes the most sense
A few situations where I think one is especially worth it:
Humid climates. Coastal areas, the Gulf, the Southeast, the Pacific Northwest and the tropics all spend a good part of the year above the 60% mark indoors.
A kit that's outgrown a smaller cabinet. If you already run a 30L and it's full, moving up to the 80L or 125L beats buying a second small one.
Shooting in the cold and coming inside. Warm air hitting cold glass condenses, including inside the lens barrel. A cabinet gives that moisture a place to go afterward.
Vintage lenses. Older adhesives and lubricants give fungus more to feed on, so older glass tends to show it first.
Gear that doesn't get used often. Cameras and lenses in regular rotation are usually fine. It's the ones sitting in a case for months that are most at risk.
My take
A dry cabinet doesn't improve your photos. What it does is protect the gear you already own, for about 8 watts and a bit of shelf space. Lens fungus is expensive to repair when it can be repaired at all, and a lens with fungus loses most of its resale value. If a cabinet saves even one lens, it's paid for itself!
If you have some spare or are looking to make a good investment for your gear change try one out! 💙
Here's a link to a YouTube video where you can see them in action! :)
Disclosure: The specs above are the manufacturer's published numbers.