More explicit question on cold weather

[daniel_jolicoeur]

O.K. living in Maine I know how to keep myself warm. I still am

alittle confused from the previous post. If I am planning on shooting

lets say on a Sunday morning with temps. between 15F-25F. From what I

read I should put all my equipment including film in the car Saturday

night. Now do I wrap them in a bag at this time for condensation or

just put it open in the cold car.

 

My real concern is after the shoot. Do I put the film, and the

holders in a plastic bag also while they come back up to tempeture?

Or just the camera & equipment? In my thinking I would want the

exposed film just brought in the house with out a bag the same as

taking film out of the freezer. I could use the clearification

please. I have been thinking about this also. Thanks in advance for

your replies.

[mark_sampson]

I live in a similar climate and have photographed extensively outdoors in the winter. I don't worry too much about these things. The camera gear will have cooled down enough in the back of the car by the time you get anywhere. (I keep my holders in ziploc bags anyway

against the dust.) When you go back inside just let things warm up to room temperature. I've never had an equipment or film problem from condensation in 20+ years. Two caveats: 1)I don't work in truly Arctic temps (below 0 degrees F) and 2) I did once have the plastic WA bellows on my camera split- in the cold they are no longer flexible.

[matt miller cambridge, ia]

I understand protecting your equipment while it is warming to prevent condensation, but why should you "pre-cool" it?

[guytal]

I think leaving it in the car overnight is a bit extreme and if you plan to have your heater on while you drive, the effect will be lost anyway. If you plan to do more than an hour's worth of hiking, your gear will cool down on the way, otherwise stick your pack in the trunk or elsewhere away from the heater vents and give it about an hour before you use it.<br>

I winter-hike and snowshoe in the mountains of Northern Utah quite a bit. I never had to leave my gear in the car overnight and never had problems with dew or fogging. The only time I had a bad experience was in Oregon's Columbia Gorge in winter when I tried to make an image of one of the falls with gear that was placed on the passenger side seat in a warm car.<br>

<br>

Guy

[john_cook1]

Aside from static electricity from the dry air, the only problems I have ever had were a sticky shutter and condensation. The shutter started to stick after an hour or so when its lubricant had chilled. The condensation happened only when returning a cold camera to the warm and humid house.

 

My advice therefore would be to keep the camera, especially the lens, as warm as possible until you are ready to make the exposure. And plastic-bag both the lens and holders before returning inside your home (until they warm up). Probably the meter too.

 

Ayuh.

[matt miller cambridge, ia]

Cooling your gear down before use in cold weather is bad advice. No reason for it that I can see. Condensation only happens when going from a cold environment to a warm one. Never the other way around. I'm with John on this one, keep your stuff warm as long a possible.

[matt miller cambridge, ia]

Daniel, to answer your original question, yes, you should let your film holders warm up before removing them from the sealed bag and exposing them to the warm air. Just as, when removing your film from the freezer, you (should) let it warm up before opening the box. The film holders would probably protect the film from condensation, but why chance it.

[harold_levie]

The physics of the problem is that air's ability to hold water (in the form of vapor) decreases with temperature. Warm air holds more water than cold air, on an absolute basis, and in low temperatures the mass of water per volume of air is very small. Air that is "relatively" dry (indoors) still has more water than cold (outdoor) air, so that if you cool down the indoor air water has to condense out. This is what happens at the surface of your camera or lens: the air that is next to the surface is cooled by the equipment and rejects its excess water onto the surface as condensation. Eventually, the surface warms up enough for the water to evaporate, but by that time the lens spotting, shutter corrosion, or whatever, has already taken place. The idea behind the plastic bag is to seal the equipment away from the relatively humid indoor air until it is warmed to the point where water will no longer condense (above the "dew point").

 

Condensation on the outside of the bag may be a nuisance, but obviously won't harm the gear. A modern, all-plastic cut film holder is probably well enough sealed that most of the water will not reach the film, but wet surfaces do collect dust and I definitely wouldn't subject a wooden holder to this if I could avoid it. A food storage bag costs less than a sheet of film, and a lot less than even a crummy holder.

 

The notion of leaving equipment in the cold is sound if you are thinking of going inside for a short time, but the idea of pre-chilling it makes no sense at all. As others have pointed out, lubricants get stiff inside shutters, plastics (film, but also bellows, lens shades, tripod locks...) get stiff and/or brittle, and batteries lose output capability as the temperature drops. Large format probably doesn't suffer as badly as roll or 35 millimeter, since the film does not have to be coiled. Years ago it was fairly common to read about 35mm cameras being professionally "winterized" by removing all lubricants for use in low temperatures. I understand that this was rather hard on the mechanisms, which were not designed to work dry. I suppose that if I were a pro specializing in wintertime mountain photography I might find it worthwhile to have a special "winterized" shutter, but I'd be more likely to try to figure out some way to keep the mechanism warm.

 

A small format camera can be kept inside the coat or jacket so that body heat keeps it warm; this keeps breath from condensing on the eyepiece of the viewfinder, but the trick is to get it back inside before it cools off to a temperature below the dew point of the (very humid) air inside the coat. The same procedure could be applied to a

light meter, since both the battery and liquid crystal display (if any) will suffer in the cold.

 

For what it is worth, this is not all theory for me: I once had a Yashicamat freeze with the shutter open doing night photography. I continued to take pictures by using the lens cap as a shutter, until the watch on my wrist also stopped and I had to give up. When everything warmed up, it worked fine again. According to the weather service, the temperature was five degrees below zero [Fahrenheit]; I had probably been outside for an hour and a half.

[allen_whittier]

Harold is right on the money. I work with a large photo collection for a museum, and a lot of our older negatives are stored cold. To keep them from damage while removal from the cold we double bag everything going into cold storage so that it won't collect moisture from the air coming out. I would give everything, film and gear, an overnight in a plastic bag to warm up. All my personal cold stored film is in plastic and comes out the night before I need it. It may be more critical for me since I live in Oregon, but it's still good practice for anyone.

[allen_whittier]

"To keep them from damage while removal from the cold we double bag everything going into cold storage so that it won't collect moisture from the air coming out"

 

Should read; To keep them from damage while removal from the cold we double bag everything going into cold storage so that it won't collect moisture from the air while coming out of the cold into the warm room.

 

It reads better.

[eric rose]

currently it's -25C here and I am out using my LF with no problems. I take the camera straight from the house to the car in it's camera bag. I make sure it's in the rear area of the car so it doesn't heat up to much. Upon leaving the car with the camera I keep it in the bag until I want to use it. The time it takes me to mess about figuring out what I want to do is time enought to let it cool down enough to eliminate any condensation problems.

 

The only thing you have to watch out for is "breath control". Make sure you don't exhale onto your equipment. If you do you will get lots of condensation.

 

Up here in Canada, well at least in my part, we have a VERY dry humidity so don't have to worry to much about it. Of course the super dry air causes it's own problems.

[jonathan_hughes2]

I just spent a weekend camping/shooting here in Alaska. My thermometer showed -15 F as I was taking night shots. I didn't have any problem with the shutter sticking, or the bellows splitting (Toyo 45CF) but all of my gear became throughly frozen and lightly frosted like the trees and bushes around me. I slept with the camera between my legs in the sleeping bag, which took care of the frost and it was ready to go the next morning. I used QL film and it seemed to work well. I also had difficulty with frost on the front of the lens. I kept the GG clear by holding my breath -it sorta worked. I let the backpack come to room temperature before going through everything, though I should note that all the film was in a tupperware-type container.

 

Next time I will definitly bring someone else along, and more hot chocolate!