Shooting in freezing conditions.Advive?.

Those chemical hand warmers can keep your batteries warm – but it’s probably not a good idea to put them directly on the batteries. If you don’t have a chem warmer you can, if you’re desperate, shove your spare batteries in your underwear to feed off your body heat. I’ve been able to rotate two batteries back and forth between camera and skin for hours. It’s not exactly pleasant, but if you need the juice…

And if you’re shooting film, you’ll want to keep spare rolls in a pouch that’s exposed to the cold air. (Don’t shove your film in your underwear unless you’re about to get shaken down at a dodgy checkpoint.) If your film is stored in a warm place (near your body) you can get condensation on your film and on the inside of your camera when you pull a roll straight from the warm place into your cold camera body. You should also avoid taking your film into and out of heated environments for the same reason. Minimizing rapid temperature changes will also help to maintain the color and light sensitivity of the film.

How cold are you talking about? If it’s only around 0 C you won’t have too many problems, if minus 20 C you’ll have to be careful about a number of things. I’ve always found that the key, as Thorne says, is to keep the temperature changes your gear goes through to a minimum. The last thing you want is condensation building up.

I also wear gloves designed for shooting, which are made of neoprene and the tips of the fingers fold back so you can make the delicate adjustments necessary on a manual camera. These I highly recommend, if you want to keep a camera in your hand all the time.

Cheers, PHC.

Temperature wise it will be between 0 and -20C.
Ive had condensation inside my viewfinder before but a mate of mine and “Stupid photographer” dude told me how to fix that by putting the camera in a plastic bag full of silica gel.It worked.That guy isnt as stupid as he says he is.

Thanks for your advice guys.Ill take more care moving from outside to inside temps.
I think ill take your advice Thorne and stick my batteries down my tightie whities.

There’s a couple of earlier threads on this:

-30-degrees”>Shooting in -30 degrees