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Photography in cold environments

Inspired by some questions in an english-speaking photography group, I’d like to share some experiences concerning photography in cold (and very cold!) environments.

Please excuse my English – I’ve tried my best!

As I am very keen in photographing at night and outdoor off-road (especially wildlife-pictures), I’ve been in situations, where it has been necessary to shot in temperatures below 0°C. The most stock (D)SLRs are not supposed to work in a such environment – in fact, they do work!. The usual range of temperatures provided by manufacturer is 0°- 40°C. Only some very special models are allowed to be operated down to -10°C. Never mind: I’ve shot several times in winter-nights and –mornings at freezing-cold -18 °C with my 7D. There are some facts you should know about.

Problem No. 1: battery drain

In such cold situations, your battery will drain empty faster than you can expect! Always keep some spare-battery in your trousers’ pocket, so that it’ll stay as warm as possible! It’s no solution to have a battery-grip attached with two batteries in it – they will both get empty! Keep one in your pocket!

Problem No. 2: freezing Zoom/focus-rings

With quite warm equipment in a snowing situation, it’s possible to get in the very uncomfortable situation that snowflakes are melting directly on the camera or the body. Melting-water can cause frozen zoom-rings or focus rings on your equipment. Always keep you equipment covered and free from snow and ice. Try to avoid to put your gear on the ground when there’s snow! Use some blanket if possible. Military surplus-stores have plenty of cheap blankets that are perfect!

Problem No. 3: fogging on lens and ocular

After taking some shots with your breath held-on or while looking for a new target, it’s quite common to breath out deeply – just to get comfortable again. In cold winter environments or in cold nights, you’ll be faced with the problem that your breath will immediately produce fogging on the ocular / eyepiece. Usually, you’ll notice that just when aiming on your next target…as you can’t recognize it any more.

Try to breath out always away from your camera ocular and lens. Some cleaning tissues provide a certain resistance against fogging – but at sub-zero-temperatures, I just don’t trust them. To protect your front lens against general fogging, just use the lens-hood!

Problem No. 4: humidity

When breathing while looking through the camera’s eyepiece, your breath will immediately condense on the cold body to masses of water drops. Depending on the design of your camera-body, this water can drip into either battery-compartment or into the memory slot. Both can be disastrous and can cause severe damages to your gear. Avoiding this is important. The EOS 7D which I use is supplied with waterproof seals on each opening of the camera-body, so that humidity like rain and dew and waterdrops can not drip inside. If your camera does not have such seals, you may use some rain-coat for the camera body. There are real cheap ones available in ebay or amazon:

http://www.amazon.de/Allwetterschutz-Regencape-Spiegelreflexkameras-Set-bestehend-verschiedenen/dp/B0036V6Q6M/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386587861&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=dslr+rain+coat

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Problem No. 5: HUMIDITY!!

Different than direct humidity during the shooting, you can hardly avoid the condensation-humidity when coming back to warmer environments – e.g. your car or your home. Your gear is freezing cold – the air back home is warm. The humidity, that is in this air, will just turn into water drops on your gear when entering your home. Not even a sealed body or a rain-cape will avoid this, as neither the seals nor the rain-cover are AIR-TIGHT.

A proper solution to keep your gear dry after finishing your shooting is:

When finished your work, put the whole camera in a plastic-bag and seal it air-tight – WHILE YOU ARE STILL IN THE COLD ENVIRONTMENT! There are some air tight Zip-Locked bags available in Ebay or amazon…maybe a bigger garbage-bag is possible too. It has to be real air-tight. Press it, to control that no air may escape. The warm, humid air in the warmer environment will condense outside the plastic-bag and not on the camera-body, as this is protected against the humid air. Leave the camera in the bag, until it has reached room-temperature. Then you can open the bag and there won’t be any condensation at all on the body. (It is a good idea, to remove the memory card before putting the cam in the bag and put the card in your pocket. Due to the data-writing on the memory card, it’ll be just hand-warm, so it’s no problem to bring the card into your home without any acclimatization.)

What I personally do to prevent condensation:

Nothing! I trust my camera. The 7D is the toughest body besides the 1D! It is built to resist that! When coming from cold to warm situations, I just wrap the camera with the attached lens in a towel, so that water-drops are kept in the towel and will not stay on the body. If there will be water-drops directly on the camera’s sensor and will leave some dirt there some time, I’ll have to clean it – sure. But up to now, after 35000 shots in tropical environments, long-time-exposures at night and winter-shootings in ice and snow – that has not been necessary.

The solution for those, who want to spend a large amount of money:

Especially for long-time-exposure astrophotography, there are heating-sleeves for telescopes and lenses available in special astrophotography-stores in the internet The usage is very similar to what you can see in Formula1-Races: the battery-operated sleeves are wrapped around the lens and body, to keep it in a constant temperature. The intention in this case is totally different! There is no need to avoid condensation – it’s the need to prevent the lens or the telescope-mirror or any part of that gear from deforming during getting warmer or colder, as the focal-point is that sensitive that the image may get defocussed when some parts get deformed due to variations in temperature.