Gear & Apps
Dust Donut: Add a Weather Seal to Your Canon Lenses
Imagine you have been planning an epic street shoot for weeks with your photography buddies, but on the day of the shoot, you look out your window and realize that it’s drizzling. For most photographers, this would kill all their plans for shooting that day, but luckily for you, you have a weather-sealed dslr, such as the Canon 5D Mark III. However, you discover that most of your lenses are not weather-sealed.
In fact, nearly 75% of lenses available on the Canon EF lens mount lack any form of weather sealing.
Unsealed Canon EF lens without Dust Donut
To address this common and frustrating problem, Tyler Sterbentz created the Dust Donut, a weather sealing rubber o-ring that attaches to the mounting surface of a DSLR’s lens.
The Dust Donut fits precisely on any Canon lens
By blocking dirt and moisture from collecting around your lens and camera’s connecting area, the Dust Donut prevents harmful dirt and moisture from entering your camera body’s opening and collecting on the digital sensor causing serious damage and image degradation.
Canon 5D Mark II with a Dust Donut equiped EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens
Dust Donut in Action
To see the Dust Donut in action, check out this video!
Lens Compatibility List
Because they are created to add a weather resistant seal in the same way that some of the high end Canon “L” series lenses do, Dust Donuts are precisely engineered to fit exactly on your lens mount. With no sloppy over hangs or gaps to worry about that could allow leaks or cause lens attachment problems, you can freely shoot and change lenses with peace of mind.
Here are the lenses that are compatible with the Dust Donut:
Canon EF-S Lenses: EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM, EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM, EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM, EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM, EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS, EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS, EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM
Canon EF Telephoto Zoom Lenses: EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM, EF 70-200mm f/4L USM, EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM, EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM, EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM, EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III, EF 100-300mm f/4.5-5.6 USM, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Canon EF Wide Angle: EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye, EF 20mm f/2.8 USM, EF 24mm f/2.8 IS USM, EF 28 f/1.8 USM, EF 28mm f/2.8 IS USM, EF 35mm f/1.4L USM, EF 35mm f/2 IS USM, EF 35mm f/2
Canon Standard & Medium Telephoto: EF 40mm f/2.8 STM, EF 50mm f/1.4 USM, EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM, EF 85mm f/1.8 USM, EF 100mm f/2 USM
Canon Telephoto: EF 135mm f/2L USM, EF 135mm f/2.8 with Softfocus, EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM
Canon Macro: EF 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro, MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Photo, EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM, EF 180mm f/3.5L Macro USM
Canon Tilt Shift: TS-E 17mm f/4L, TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II, TS-E 45mm f/2.8, TS-E 90mm f/2.8
To learn more about the Dust Donut, please visit Kick Starter.
An impressive share! I have just forwarded this onto a friend who had been conducting a little research on this. And he in fact ordered me lunch simply because I stumbled upon it for him… lol. So allow me to reword this…. Thanks for the meal!! But yeah, thanks for spending the time to discuss this matter here on your blog.|
Where can I buy them?
No Nikon yet? :(
good stuff! :)
The purpose of this is not to make the lens weather sealed. This is to prevent any water/dust enter between the rear lens and camera body.
Use a rubber band, this is not a bad invention though.
I really cant see the main purpose of this. It have a good start point. But most non-weather seal lens will not benefit from it with this ring. The zoom barrel will allow water to slip in. I think one of the exception will be the EF-S 10-22, which front element can be covered by filter. (But buttons still expose)
My 400mm f/5.6L is begging for this. It’s a “partially sealed” lens, missing only the rubber at the mount. Perfect.
But it doesn’t seal any of the switches the lens has, nor the barrel, or zoom or focus rings. Pretty useless unless you have one of the very few partially sealed Canon lenses!
Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense to seal one part where dirt and water gets in and leave all the others unsealed.
Also, this “invention” is not an invention: it is just a rubber ring, you can get a one in a hardware store that sells rubber sealing rings. They exist in many sizes, chose one that fits the mount, or is a bit smaller (rubber is elastic) and you are done. All that for probably $2.
Where can u buy those?
The Kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/77243737/dust-donuttm-add-a-weather-seal-to-the-mount-of-an?ref=live
– Joe Fotosiamo
They should make them for other systems as well, although it makes sense that they start out with Canon of course. Nikon and MFT would be interesting.
The inventor is a Canon-shooter so yes it makes perfect sense :D