Question:  I've just bought a rugged case for my digital camera that says that it has an rating of IP67.  What does this mean?  How well will this protect my digital camera?

There are a variety of water and dust resistant cases and carriers on the market, so many that it's becoming hard to spot the good stuff from the not so good stuff.  One way that you can tell how well a case might protect your digital assets from dirt, sand, dust and water is by looking for an IP rating.

IP stands for Ingress Protection.  The IP rating is an international classification system for how well sealed enclosures used for electrical equipment are against foreign bodies (ranging from tools, fingers, all the way down to dust) and moisture.

This classification system makes use of the letters "IP" followed by two digits (sometimes an "x" is used for one of the digits if there is only one class of protection - I'll come to that in a little while).

The first digit after the "IP" indicates the degree that the equipment is protected against solid foreign bodies getting into an enclosure.

• 0 - No special protection.
• 1 - Protection from a large part of the body such as a hand (but no protection from deliberate access) and from solid objects larger than 50mm in diameter. 
• 2 - Protection against fingers or other object that are not greater than 80mm in length and 12mm in diameter. 
• 3 - Protection from entry by tools or wires with a diameter of thickness greater than 1.0mm. 
• 4 - Protection from entry by solid objects with a diameter or thickness greater than 1.0mm 
• 5 - Protection from the amount of dust that would interfere with the operation of the equipment. 
• 6 - Dust tight.

The second digit indicates how much protection the equipment inside the enclosure has against the entry of various forms of moisture (drips, spray, submersion).

• 0 - No special protection 
• 1 - Protection from dripping water. 
• 2 - Protection from vertically dripping water. 
• 3 - Protection from sprayed water. 
• 4 - Protection from splashed water. 
• 5 - Protection from water projected from a nozzle 
• 6 - Protection against heavy seas, or powerful jets of water. 
• 7 - Protection against immersion. 
• 8 - Protection against complete, continuous submersion in water.

Items that have a 7 or 8 rating should also have a submersion depth and time rating.

So, where does the "x" come in?  Well, let's say that an enclosure is dust proof but doesn't have any moisture resistance rating, this would be categorized as IP6x.  Another commonly seen IP rating containing an "x" is IPx7, where an item has a moisture resistance rating but no rating against foreign bodies.

So, back to your case which is rated as IP67.  This means that the case is dust tight and also protects against immersion.  Look closely at the rating and you should see a depth and time rating for the immersion too.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 10:33 and is filed under Questions from Visitors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.