Winter Weather Photo Tips #1
Here is my cold weather winter photography tip – Stay inside or head South! (I really hate the cold weather) Now, if you put your camera away right after the last of the fall colours, then there is no need to read any further. Stay inside your house until May.
But if you do want to venture out into that bitterly cold freezing winter weather, here’s a tip that might help…..your camera but not you! If you wear glasses or know someone that does, you already know this one. As soon as you come inside from the cold weather your glasses fog up immediately with condensation. Same thing happens to your camera, which is Okay for the glass optics but it’s not very good for the electronics and the mechanical parts of the lens and camera.
When you head outside you don’t have to worry about condensation forming on your camera, that only happens when you bring the camera in. The best thing to do is to let your camera/lens get cold and keep it cold. Once the camera is cold and if it is snowing then the snow won’t melt as it falls on your camera. However if you do get snowflakes building up on the front of your lens or on your camera don’t try to blow the snow off like you are blowing out birthday candles. If you do, you will just melt some of it and fog up the lens and viewfinder and end up in a real mess. Simply brush away as much snow as you can with your glove, also a Hurricane Blower works well in removing snow as it is only blowing cold air. One thing you don’t want to do is to try and warm up the camera by keeping it next to you inside your jacket. That is just going to create condensation, and then every time you take the camera out to take a picture and then put it back in to warm it up again you are just getting more and more condensation each time, that’s bad!
Make you sure you start the day off with fully charged camera battery(s). The cold will reduce a battery’s performance, whether it’s your car’s or camera’s battery. Bring along a spare battery (for your camera…. not your car) and keep it warm inside your jacket. Then you can switch or rotate between the batteries from time to time, which gives you more time to stay out in the cold.
When it’s time to come back in, is when you have to worry about that condensation I mentioned earlier. What I do, is put everything in my camera bag (Lowepro Fastpack 250) zip it up tight and bring it in the house/car and let it warm up for several hours before opening it. If your camera bag has foam padding then this technique should work for you. If not, then you will have to put your lenses and cameras and everything else in individually sealed Ziploc plastic bags and then put these in your camera bag. Bring everything inside and let it warm up slowly, just like your toes and fingers.
Great tips Gary! Thanks for sharing.