Cold Weather Photography

Cold weather in Fairbanks, Alaska.

I'm asked frequently about photographing in the cold weather, so I posted an article on my web site. Here is a brief excerpt of that, which I plan to update in the future. Read the full cold weather photography article.

There is a rare beauty in Alaska’s winter, both in the quality of light and color, and its silence and simplicity. But it can be extreme in cold temperatures, particularly in the interior and arctic regions. To experience and document this season, you need to reconcile your working photography system with cold weather. One needs a method that keeps them warm enough to function, as well as enjoy the experience. While I like being in the cold, I do not like being cold. There is a big difference here. Like most things in life, we feel most comfortable and confident once we have personally tested ourselves in a given situation or set of conditions. This applies for working in the cold as well.

Two ways to stay warm:

There are two basic ways we stay warm. One is to generate heat within through exertion and then retain that heat with clothing, or we can absorb the heat from another source like a wood stove, chemical hand warmers, or drinking hot fluids. Sometimes, putting on more insulation or clothing just does not help, and some sort of additional heat is needed. A combination of both work best for me. I should first state that by comparison with my other hominid friends and colleagues, I seem very susceptible to cold hands and feet. Over the years it seems as if I’ve tried just about everything in the attempt at staying warm. I have found no magic solution. However, my constantly tweaked system seems to work o.k., if implemented well. I’ll discuss here how I dress and deal with photography in cold weather. By the way, this is about the human body, not the camera gear. I’ve found so far, that the weak link is me, not my cameras and gear (save that of having extra batteries).

General Clothing:

When photographing in Alaska’s super cold sub zero temperatures; I’m very seldom expending great degrees of exertion. Generally, I’m standing around waiting for the aurora borealis, or waiting for the proper light to fall upon a landscape. In these conditions, I break ranks with the conventional wisdom of clothing layering. Layering IS very critical when your body temperature varies considerably due to heat generation through exercise and you need to adjust with clothing by adding or removing layers. As for the deep cold, when you are not exerting yourself, what you want is loft and insulation. This is best achieved with down, like a hefty down parka, although some synthetics work well also. I start with a base layer of wool (merino wool—soft on the skin, or capelline). Definitely not cotton! Then over that goes a mid weight shirt of similar fabric, one that has a collar reach to cover the neck, then a down sweater, then my hooded down parka. This does the trick pretty well, and my body core stays warm even at very cold temps. I use similar base layers for the legs with an outer layer being appropriate for the conditions. Generally that is a pair of insulated bib overalls. Avoid anything “tight” fitting... Read the rest of this article >>

Pro image quality becomes more affordable

Canon will soon be shipping the recently announced, much anticipated 5D Mark II. It matches the company's flagship 1DS Mark III for resolution, with 21.1 megapixels, and boasts some interesting new features. Perhaps most interesting to many, however, is the price. At $2699 verses $7999 for the 1Ds Mark II, it brings professional resolution and features to a slightly more mainstream level.


The real question for us, however, is what's next?

Canon 1Ds Mark III Custom Functions

In switching from the 1Ds Mark II to the Mark III, one should really read the camera manual. Now how many people actually do this? I glanced at it, but must admit that I feigned an entire read. Until, I ran into a few odd discoveries, which prompted further exploration. Most notably, was the reduced frame rate, about 2 frames a second even in the fast mode. It turns out that having the High ISO digital noise reduction turned on slows down the frame rate due to software processing for noise. With the Mark II, I left it on all the time and it did not seem to make a difference. Make sure to turn it off for maximum speed.

Additionally, with custom functions buried in 4 different categories, it is hard to remember what is where. A helpful feature of the Mark III lets you tag your most often used custom functions and register them to show up under the "My Menu settings". This can provide a much quicker access to custom functions that you change often, like LCD Brightness, Mirror lockup, etc.

Fast lenses and northern lights

This image illustrates one main advantage of fast wide angle lenses--they offer shorter shutter speeds. Shorter exposure times mean more detail. A five second shutter speed in this case captures more distinctive shapes commonly found during the coronal display. These shapes tend to get all blurred together with long exposures.

To achieve this however, you need some money. That is to say, fast lenses are usually expensive. In this case, I used Canon's 24mm f1.4L, it goes for about $1300. If a 24mm f2.8 lens was used--same focal length but two stops slower--the exposure would have been 20 seconds. That would have rendered a different looking image indeed, lacking the detail in shape. This is especially true when the aurora is moving quickly. The focusing of this lens however, is very finicky and I've had many frustrations with slightly blurry images. In contrast, my 16-35mm f2.8L, focused in the exact same manner, in the same conditions, works beautifully. I'm often shooting two cameras, one with the 24 f1.4 and one with the 16-35mm f2.8.

There is much to say regarding Aurora borealis photography. I've written a brief and basic article, which can be read in full here: "How to photograph the aurora with a digital camera".

Aurora borealis coronal display, high arctic, Alaska
Canon 1Ds Mark II, 24mm f1.4L, 5 seconds @ f1.4, ISO 640

Canon 1Ds Mark III file renaming

Canon's 1Ds Mark III offers a means to customize the factory specified four-digit camera name that precedes the four digit file name. In the process of implementing this option, I encountered a problem which had no answer in the documentation—at least not that I could find. Under the Tools 1 menu, I set the custom four digits to my preference (In my case, four numbers). However, after taking pictures and downloading them, the custom four digit included an unwanted underscore character “_”. I later found out from Canon that the underscore is a default naming convention for the Adobe RGB color space, the custom file renaming option only works if the color space is set to sRGB. If you shoot in RAW, the color workspace does not really matter since you can change that if and when your processed files are output to another file type. The color space is set through the Camera 1 menu.

Canon 1Ds Mark III file renaming feature requires an sRGB color space to work correctly.