Just sat waiting for a connecting flight to Oslo from the frontier town I've been based at, around 800 miles north of Norway, half way to the North Pole.
I've been filming glacier research for a short doc. I thought I'd post some observations, while they're fresh in my mind.
We've been shooting at temps around -25 to -30 C. Having prepared loads of extra batteries and chargers for the FS7, with dire warnings of quick exhaustion, the biggest surprise was how I managed to not even get through one of the cheap Chinese £40 batteries in one day. The camera itself crapped out a couple of times, booting and then going blank. Wind chill on the skidoo was taking temps down to almost -50C.
Electronic lenses - Canon Ls and the hugely useful 18-105 - all performed faultlessly.
GoPro batteries really did suffer, with reduced times and the camera struggled to write the headers, leaving us with big files that wouldn't play or copy. We managed to reshoot them.
Skidoo suits were brilliant - kept us warm and flexible enough to work in.
At the end of the day, before heading inside, I put the camera in one of those large vacuum sealing bags. That avoided any condensation, when heading inside to warm humid air. The cold dry air in the bag just warms up with the camera. No moisture issues at all.
No issues with Sony EVF fogging when shooting - but possibly more to do with lack of pollution or particulates in the air.
Ben.
I've been filming glacier research for a short doc. I thought I'd post some observations, while they're fresh in my mind.
We've been shooting at temps around -25 to -30 C. Having prepared loads of extra batteries and chargers for the FS7, with dire warnings of quick exhaustion, the biggest surprise was how I managed to not even get through one of the cheap Chinese £40 batteries in one day. The camera itself crapped out a couple of times, booting and then going blank. Wind chill on the skidoo was taking temps down to almost -50C.
Electronic lenses - Canon Ls and the hugely useful 18-105 - all performed faultlessly.
GoPro batteries really did suffer, with reduced times and the camera struggled to write the headers, leaving us with big files that wouldn't play or copy. We managed to reshoot them.
Skidoo suits were brilliant - kept us warm and flexible enough to work in.
At the end of the day, before heading inside, I put the camera in one of those large vacuum sealing bags. That avoided any condensation, when heading inside to warm humid air. The cold dry air in the bag just warms up with the camera. No moisture issues at all.
No issues with Sony EVF fogging when shooting - but possibly more to do with lack of pollution or particulates in the air.
Ben.
