Artic photography - any suggestions?

Help! I'm heading to the Artic (Hudson Bay) next month and hope to take some
photos of polar bears and other wildlife. Any suggestions on how to get the
best white on white shot? Film suggestions? I'm using a Nikon N6006, with
zoom up to 200x

"SANDEES MOM" u27080@uwe wrote:
Help! I'm heading to the Artic (Hudson Bay) next month and hope to take some
photos of polar bears and other wildlife. Any suggestions on how to get the
best white on white shot? Film suggestions? I'm using a Nikon N6006, with
zoom up to 200x

What is a "zoom up to 200x"??? Maybe you mean you have a zoom
that has a maximum focal length of 200mm???

I've never been to Hudson Bay, so I can't be specific about what
to do in that particular location. I'm not even sure exactly
what the weather there is like (though I can give that a pretty
good guess).

Word to the wise with polar bears... do *not* get close to one.
They look nice and cuddly, and people often get the idea they
can walk right up next to them and start taking pictures. The
damned things might just decide to *eat* you! If you can run
1/2 a mile in 0.01 seconds, you're safe. Otherwise you turn
into bear ****.

You have two basic problems when using cameras in the Arctic.
One is cold weather. The other is a need for long lenses.

You will not likely experience anything next month in the way
of extremely cold weather. But even at 0C there are some problems
you need to be aware of. Humidity is the big one.

If you are outside and it is anything from near 0C on down, any
equipment you have out in the cold air (cameras, lenses, and you
eye glasses are all examples that you will commonly experience
problems with) will eventually cool down to the ambient outside
air temperature. That causes problems.

First, if it is cold enough the batteries will stop working.
Different batteries can survive at different temperatures.

Second, if it is cold enough all lubrication will freeze,
and become glue.

For items one and two, which you won't likely suffer in October
anyway, one way to handle it is to keep the camera inside your
coat when not actually shooting pictures. If you can keep it
warm enough, it won't be a problem. But at -40C you just don't
have an ordinary camera out and shooting continuously for very
long...

Third, if you breath on anything, it will get fogged up and that
will turn to ice. You can't get rid of it without warming it
up. Your glasses may suffer that (at -40C if you try to pull a
parka hood over your head to keep your nose warm, bingo you
can't see). But also the viewfinder on the camera may suffer
too! In particular on Nikon digital cameras the LCD screen gets
fogged.

None of the above is particularly dangerous, and is unlikely to
cause any permanent damage.

Forth... is a more potentially damaging problem: if you take a
cold camera and lens into a warm building, the warm air that
comes into contact with the camera contains moisture, which will
"fog" the camera and lense when it is cooled by the cold mass of
the camera. Warm air can hold more moisture than cold air, so
cooling the air around the camera causes condensation, which
lands on the camera. You can literally, at 0C outside air
temperature, walk into a warm humid house (say someone is
washing a load of clothes) and have water dripping off the
camera in beads!

The solution is to *always* have plastic sacks and baggies in
your camera bag. Keep everything small in a zip lock baggie,
and when you go inside wrap the camera in a "kitchen" sized
garbage bag. It doesn't really need to be sealed tight, but it
needs be tight enough to prevent any major exchange of humid air
with the air inside the bag. Just leave everything inside
plastic bags until it has warmed up to room temperature. Note
that air is a good insulator, so you want as little air in the
bag as possible in order to speed up the warming process.

And if you forget? As soon as you realize it, take the camera
outside, and bag it. (You want cold dry outside air in the bag,
not warm inside air.) As soon as it warms up, put the camera in
the driest place you can find, with the most air movement you can
find.

I have discovered that, at least with Nikon DSLRs, you
definitely want to always have a set of plastic tweezers for
removing the focusing screen! I fogged a D2x fairly good one
day, and it would no longer focus correctly. It turned out that
autofocus did work, but the optical focus was off. It did not
clear up when the camera had been drying for a couple days...
and I was getting very nervous about the idea of paying Nikon
$375, their minimum fee to look at it. I took the focusing
screen out, noted that it very tightly fits against another
piece of glass just above it (which would keep the moisture in
place and distort the focus as seen through the viewfinder). It
took a minute or so for it to sink in that looking at if for a
minute so was indeed all it would take to "fix" it! And indeed,
it was fine when put back together.

Any given bit of equipment may have its own odd problems with
condensation.

But beyond that, buy, borrow, or steal the longest lens you
can find. Most of the Arctic (I don't know about the area you
are going to though) is flat tundra, but even when it isn't there
is no forest cover. Either way, you can't hide well, and can
be seen from a long way off. Hence to get pictures of many
animals you need a *long* lense. 400mm is about the shortest
for many things.

I was out taking pictures of snowy owls yesterday, and used an
800mm f/5.6 lens. I actually had a 2x telextender on it for
most shots, though some were just the bare lense... and a few
were taken with both a 1.6x and a 2x telextender! And of course
that is using a DSLR with a 1.5 crop factor, so for your 35mm
the equivalent would be a 1200mm lense, and the focal length
with both telextenders would be the equivalent of 3840mm!
(After shooting more than 300 shots, one owl got curious, and
flew over and perched on a sign post directly across the road
from me, perhaps 40 feet away. It was just barely _closer_ than
the 800mm lense can focus! I had to switch to an 80-200mm zoom,
using the 2x extender, which makes it roughly a 600mm lense for
your camera, to get full frame shots at that distance.)

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

My wife and I have been to Churchill twice. First in mid October with Canon
film cameras. Second in mid November with Canon digital. October had some
snow, but not full white. Exposed 400 speed negative film one f-stop greater
than metered. Lots of time the light level was low due to thick clouds and
falling snow. Shooting from tundra buggies requires hand-holding and fast
shutter most of the time because they move a lot when people inside move.
The springs are very soft. One person did use a tripod some with long
exposures, but did not get many good pictures. Most pictures from inside the
buggy through an open window. A 28-200mm zoom provided many good shots. A
longer zoom would have been useful at times. The 28mm setting was also used
a lot. For near bears, 28mm provided body shots; 200mm provided head shots.
Some shots were just a few feet from the buggy.
http://lewbar.tripod.com/bears/bears.html has several of the pictures we
made that trip. Temperature was 28 to 35 f most of the time.

The November trip had ice and snow in abundance. Morning temperature was
well below zero f, with significant wind. High temperature was about 10 f.
Thank goodness the buggies are heated. Only problem with picture taking from
the buggy porch was loss of shutter feel with cold finger after just a few
minutes. Cameras had no problem with the cold for the few minutes I could
stand to be out except for breath condensing on viewfinder. The 28-200mm
lens was again used for most shots with a digital rebel; a 1.6 cropping
factor made it act longer. An 18-55mm was used at times. A 75-300 IS was
used on a 10D for distant shots. Again, the 1.6 cropping factor made it act
longer. A ISO speed of 400 or 800 was used, with one or 1.33 f-stop
overexposure because of the white background. The histogram display of the
digital camera indicated the shots were adequately exposed. With slide film,
much more care in exposure might be needed.

Polar bears are not white, they are beige. Metering on a bear is less light
than from the snow. Negative film is tolerant of over exposure. Slide film
and digital are not. With digital, under exposure can be corrected with
processing, but not over exposure.

Most tourists on both these trips just had point and shoot cameras. They got
several good bear shots when the bears would approach the buggy. I also got
good shots of arctic fox and birds, and many more bear shots with the longer
lenses.

Battery power might be a problem for you if it is really cold. All the
cameras I used had lithium batteries that maintain their power when cold.
Alkaline batteries do not.

I have not had to carry film through an airport for several years. The
November trip was in 2004 when I was all digital. You will probably shoot
several rolls each day.

"SANDEES MOM" u27080@uwe wrote in message news:66ccd19f126b1@uwe...
Help! I'm heading to the Artic (Hudson Bay) next month and hope to take
some
photos of polar bears and other wildlife. Any suggestions on how to get
the
best white on white shot? Film suggestions? I'm using a Nikon N6006, with
zoom up to 200x

Lew wrote:
My wife and I have been to Churchill twice. First in mid October with Canon
film cameras. Second in mid November with Canon digital. October had some
snow, but not full white. Exposed 400 speed negative film one f-stop greater
than metered. Lots of time the light level was low due to thick clouds and
falling snow. Shooting from tundra buggies requires hand-holding and fast
shutter most of the time because they move a lot when people inside move.
The springs are very soft. One person did use a tripod some with long
exposures, but did not get many good pictures. Most pictures from inside the
buggy through an open window. A 28-200mm zoom provided many good shots. A
longer zoom would have been useful at times. The 28mm setting was also used
a lot. For near bears, 28mm provided body shots; 200mm provided head shots.
Some shots were just a few feet from the buggy.
http://lewbar.tripod.com/bears/bears.html has several of the pictures we
made that trip. Temperature was 28 to 35 f most of the time.

The November trip had ice and snow in abundance. Morning temperature was
well below zero f, with significant wind. High temperature was about 10 f.
Thank goodness the buggies are heated. Only problem with picture taking from
the buggy porch was loss of shutter feel with cold finger after just a few
minutes. Cameras had no problem with the cold for the few minutes I could
stand to be out except for breath condensing on viewfinder. The 28-200mm
lens was again used for most shots with a digital rebel; a 1.6 cropping
factor made it act longer. An 18-55mm was used at times. A 75-300 IS was
used on a 10D for distant shots. Again, the 1.6 cropping factor made it act
longer. A ISO speed of 400 or 800 was used, with one or 1.33 f-stop
overexposure because of the white background. The histogram display of the
digital camera indicated the shots were adequately exposed. With slide film,
much more care in exposure might be needed.

Polar bears are not white, they are beige. Metering on a bear is less light
than from the snow. Negative film is tolerant of over exposure. Slide film
and digital are not. With digital, under exposure can be corrected with
processing, but not over exposure.

Most tourists on both these trips just had point and shoot cameras. They got
several good bear shots when the bears would approach the buggy. I also got
good shots of arctic fox and birds, and many more bear shots with the longer
lenses.

Battery power might be a problem for you if it is really cold. All the
cameras I used had lithium batteries that maintain their power when cold.
Alkaline batteries do not.

I have not had to carry film through an airport for several years. The
November trip was in 2004 when I was all digital. You will probably shoot
several rolls each day.

"SANDEES MOM" u27080@uwe wrote in message news:66ccd19f126b1@uwe...
Help! I'm heading to the Artic (Hudson Bay) next month and hope to take
some
photos of polar bears and other wildlife. Any suggestions on how to get
the
best white on white shot? Film suggestions? I'm using a Nikon N6006, with
zoom up to 200x



If you have manual controls, use either an incident light meter or a
gray card for your meter readings. The all white snow and the brighter
than normal bear are going to be brighter than the gray the light meter
trys to make it. Using a gray card, an incident light meter (one that
measures the light falling on the meter not one that has light reflected
to it) or the sunny 16 rule would be best in my opinion. ( Sunny 16
rule = F16 and shutter speed equal to the film ASA. 100 speed film
would have the shutter at the closest to 100 so it would be 1/125)