Winter gear for GH1 Question

thisisapocalypse

thisisapocalypse

Well-known member
Hey guys, so I'm starting my feature film production this February, and we're shooting in Boston with quite a few exteriors, which means two things: cold & snow. I'm definitely going to be shooting during some snow showers (intentionally). I'm trying to come up with a good plan for protecting the GH1 & lens from the elements while shooting in the snow, but I've got to be able to manually focus the lenses (canon fd primes + m4/3 lenses) and I'm using the Panasonic anamorphic adapter.

I was thinking of maybe taking an old waterproof ski jacket, cutting it up and putting together some sort of rig...thoughts? When I used to shoot football at night and/or in the rain I'd use trash bags to make a waterproof cover for my 300mm f/2.8 and Eos-1 combo, but those were very durable pro cameras and the GH1 is certainly a bit more fragile...plus I want to keep the battery from freezing up too much...was even thinking of making something that I could put around the battery compartment to help keep it from getting too cold, maybe even with a slot for a handwarmer to put inside.

Any thoughts from those of you who have done shooting like this in winter-weather conditions?
 
I shot at night last week, temperatures were down to -20 with quite high humidity. The camera itself worked flawlessly except for the LCD, which struggled a bit with the temperature. I shot with just the EVF and still had 1 bar left in the single original battery that I used, this was after 2 hours of almost continuous use. I hadn't had that much faith in the Panny batteries before, but have to say I am now more than impressed by them!

The Kata cover looks ideal.
 
AdrianF said:
I shot at night last week, temperatures were down to -20 with quite high humidity. The camera itself worked flawlessly except for the LCD, which struggled a bit with the temperature. I shot with just the EVF and still had 1 bar left in the single original battery that I used, this was after 2 hours of almost continuous use. I hadn't had that much faith in the Panny batteries before, but have to say I am now more than impressed by them!

The Kata cover looks ideal.
Click to expand...

I also did a shoot (with Canon FD) at -10°C (friggin' cold) yesterday, and during shooting I thought that everything is spoiled because the LCD screen was showing a lot of ghosting, like with very long shutter speeds. I had no option so I ignored it and back at home I could see that the shots are fine - it was just the LCD screen. As AdrianF noted, 2 hours of shooting, still 2/3rds left of the battery - impressive! Footage here (Vienna Christmas Market):

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=194610
 
Thanks for the info guys, this makes me feel a lot better about shooting in the cold! The temperatures themselves don't get...too bad here, I mean, down to zero in Feb, totally possible, it's the damn wind that's the killer. Glad to hear that the battery is good in these cold temps! It's going to be a cold shoot but I love the way new england looks all snowy so we'll just have to deal with it!
 
If you have a snuggie around the camera, you can always toss a chemical hand warmer or two in to help fend off the chill.
 
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