Photography in Winter

Last morning, I received an email from a future tourist in Quebec asking me for advice concerning photography during cold winter days.I thought this could be useful for more people, so I decided to reply here to help more visitors dealing with the harsh canadian winter.



Clothes
-Wear multiple layers of clothing: This advice is not specific to photography, but is a good way to shelter ourselves from the cold weather.


-Protect your extremities: The cold will mostly attack your head, your feet and your hands.To protect the latter, it is important to chose gloves that will be warm but flexible, to allow you to manipulate your camera.

Camera
-In general, cameras will continue to work fine even under cold weather, but the autofocus and the triggering can be slower than usual when you are shooting under extreme colds (-30C and less, -22F for my american friends).

-If you plan to shoot outdoors for a long time, it's better to bring spare batteries, because they will uncharge more rapidly under the cold.

-The cold itself will not break your equipment, but the transition from a cold environment to a warm one can. A cold unprotected camera that is brought indoors will be covered with condensation, which can be damageable. To avoid this problem, a simple trick is to cover your camera and lenses with a waterproof plastic bag and put it back into your camera case. Leave it there until your gear warms up, which will last at least 2 or 3 hours.

Snow
-It is advisable to protect your gear against snow, the same way you do with the rain. There are some dedicated protectors available in stores, but you can use any plastic bag held with an elastic on the lens if you don't want to buy one.


-Finally, the cameras have a tendancy to underexpose (darken) the snowy landscapes, which will make snow grey and ugly instead of white and shiny. To counter this non desirable effect, it's better to increase the exposure to +1 and sometimes +2, to make the snow look like you want it to look. Experiment to find the right balance without overexposing your shots. Some cameras have a "snow" mode that will do that for you.

I hope that these suggestions will be useful for the photography enthusiasts that will come visit us this winter or the future ones. There are probably some other ideas that could be added, these come from my own experience freezing my hands at -20C (-4F).

Bon voyage!

JH