Wherever in the world you live or travel, winter is no time to stop
shooting photos. It does however, take some additional consideration
when it comes to your photography gear. Here then are my top three tips
to help keep your gear (and you) protected so you can continue to
capture the beauty of the coldness outside.
1. Don’t change temperatures too quickly
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| Don’t change temperatures too quickly or your gear will suffer. |
Be it hot to cold or cold to hot, whichever way, don’t change
temperatures too quickly or your gear will suffer. For those of us with
glasses, this is an obvious one. We see it when we walk from a nice warm
house out to the cold car in the morning. Boom – fogged up glasses.
Your camera will do the same when going from hot to cold and it can be a
problem even for the little lens on your camera phone.
Condensation can cause a couple of problems. The short-term problem
is a fogged lens that will not clear easily. If you don’t have a cloth
to actually soak up the moisture, don’t bother. Otherwise you’ll end up
just wiping water around your lens, smearing things and making more of a
mess. Most of us have done this at one time or another with the inside
windshield of our car when we are too impatient to wait for the heater
to clear the fog.
There are few cures for this condensation except time and temperature
change. Even if you wipe off the fog, it will come right back as new
cold air contacts the lens. It’s especially important to not remove your
lens from your camera if you have an SLR because the rear lens and
internal pieces will fog. The most effective way is to slowly acclimate
your camera to the target temperature. Some people suggest storing your
camera in a big Ziploc bag to let the temperature adjust slowly. I tend
to leave my camera in my normal camera bag with the lens cap on.
Another way to acclimate your gear is to leave it in the trunk of
your car if you are driving to your photo location. The trunk isn’t
heated and will be nearly as cold as the outside, allowing your gear to
slowly adjust while you drive.
Long-term, the more temperature changes you make in a short time, the
more condensation will start to form on the inside of your camera. Over
time, this can make problems for the electronics, especially if you
change temperatures many times in a day.
Modern cameras can handle temps below freezing without much thought,
if you let them acclimate slowly. The same goes for bringing your gear
inside. Although not as critical for condensation, rapid heating of your
gear (putting it near or over a heat vent, for instance) can have
negative consequences if done too often. Just leave your camera in its
bag and let it slowly warm up.
2. Camera cold, batteries hot
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| Tuck your batteries in your sleeping bag with you. Photo courtesy Peter West Carey. |
While you want to keep your camera cold before using it, the opposite
is true for your camera batteries. If I am going shooting in the
morning and my car is in a safe place, like my garage, I will store my
gear in the car but keep my batteries in the house. Likewise, while
camping or on my treks in the Himalayas, I will leave the camera in its
bag and sleep with the batteries. It also helps to put them in a soft
pouch rather than just floating loose in a sleeping bag.
I know this seems counterintuitive to those of us who grew up with
parents storing batteries in the fridge. In this case, you aren’t
worried about the short-term loss of power from temperature, you’re
worried that batteries are less efficient at lower temps.
When shooting, keep your spare battery (or batteries) in your pocket
as close to your body as possible. An inside pocket in a jacket or your
pants pocket work well. When your current battery needs changing,
replace it with the hot one and put the dead one in your pocket. When it
warms up you can usually get a few more shots out of it as a
last-chance backup.
3. Keep yourself warm
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| Keep yourself warm above all. Photo courtesy Peter West Carey. |
Keeping yourself warm while shooting is often tougher than it sounds.
I’ve been standing out in cold places taking photos for over 23 years
and I have no foolproof system. (I wish I did.) What I know works are
gloves that have enough tactile ability while not being too bulky. I
found bulky gloves are removed far more often and thus, defeat their
purpose. Some people will go with one thick ski glove for their left
hand and a smaller glove for their control and shooting hand.
Fingerless gloves, or the kind with a mitten that folds over exposed
fingers, can be handy, but cumbersome as well. For extended stays
outside, those hand-warming packets that stay in your pocket can be a
life saver. But you still want to cut down on the convective heat loss
when your hands are out of your pocket, otherwise the
hot-cold-hot-cold-hot-cold routine gets painful.
Beyond hands, the normal winter weather advice still stands: Cover
your head, always; nice thick boots or shoes to keep out the cold; dress
in layers in case the temperature rises; stay dry if it is snowing.
Conclusion
There’s no escaping the laws of thermodynamics when it comes to
cold-weather photography. Proper time and care though, will help ensure
your winter pics are just as beautiful as the ones in warmer weather.
Good luck out there.
Do you have any tips to share? What do you find works best to keep
you comfy and shooting while out in the cold? And show me your favorite
winter photos where braving the cold temps resulted in beautiful images.
Source: gadventures
