Learned my lesson today.

[Patriot]

Today I thought it would be a good day to go out and practice portraits in the snow. I dressed warm as I should since I didn't know how long I was going to be out there. The main thing I forgot was to allow the camera's temperature to match that of the ambient before shooting. As you can image the condensation cause most of my pictures to be hazy. I started to panic a bit as I couldn't figure out what was causing it. Why panic? I was shooting a couple that just got married and want a few pictures in the snow. I didn't want them to stay out in the cold too long as I fiddle away with the camera. On top of that the wind blew over my umbrella destroying it completely.

So not only is my lens hazy for the first part of the shoot, but my flash set up was out for the count. Even without my external light I could have just bumped up the ISO to get the lighting I needed and go along with natural light.

What lessons did I learn?

1) Allow camera to cool down if storing in warm car.
2) Weight down the light stand to prevent wind from getting the upper hand.
3) Keep cool and think of other ways to get the job done.
4) I should have bumped up the ISO to get a faster shutter speed to freeze the movement of their bodies shivering.

 

[480sparky]

Weird. I always get condensation when I go from the cold to a warmer temperature.

 

[Patriot]

Weird. I always get condensation when I go from the cold to a warmer temperature.

That's why I didn't think nothing of it. Unless it was something else going on and I just chose the wrong term. Whatever it was it cause both my lens to become hazy for the first 5-6 minutes and later cleared up.

 

[Derrel]

Are you sure you didn't breathe on the front element of the lens, OR get your warm hands close to the cold front element???

 

[WayneF]

I'm not aware of a problem going into the cold, other than the batteries can be a problem. The common advice is to keep the camera warm under your coat all you can. And to put it in a sealed ziplock bag before taking it back indoors, so the condensation forms on the outside of the bag.

This seems a rather good article on it: Cold Weather Photography - NYIP Photo Articles

 

[apaflo]

Weird. I always get condensation when I go from the cold to a warmer temperature.

That's why I didn't think nothing of it. Unless it was something else going on and I just chose the wrong term. Whatever it was it cause both my lens to become hazy for the first 5-6 minutes and later cleared up.

It's something else going on. Going from warm to cold won't cause condensation. (That's something I experience with great regularity!) Getting warm moist air on a cold camera/lens is what causes moisture to condense. Since it happened to both lenses you must have done something "odd".

What I can think of is slightly on the complex side, but everyone who lives in a cold climate will see this happen all the time. Go out and scrape the snow and ice off a cold car, start it up, and drive away. All is fine for about 5 to 10 minutes, and then all of a sudden the window fogs up completely and it is impossible to see through them! That causes a sudden scramble for something to scrape off the condensation before you crash the car!

My guess is you had exactly that happen, except it was the lens that got fogged rather than the windows.

What causes it is snow being sucked into the air intake for the heater. At first that is no problem, because it is frozen and the heater isn't producing heat. But as the car's engine gets warm and the heater starts to put out some warmth, the air flow through that snowy intake suddenly starts melting all the snow it sucks in. For a short time that puts a lot of moisture in the air being blown into the car. If you have the heater set for "defrost" it will hit the windshield. If it is set to blow out on the seat or down at the floor you may just happen to have a camera with a cold lens sitting there???

 

[ratssass]

...i'll go along with the Alaskan dude,or dudette, regarding the windshield.Suffered through that before.But I'd be interested in why the lens...

 

[apaflo]

...i'll go along with the Alaskan dude,or dudette, regarding the windshield.Suffered through that before.But I'd be interested in why the lens...

The lens sits there and gets cold before the car eventually warms up. So the air coming from the heater finally becomes warm it is also very moist due to melting snow, and when it hits the lens it's fog time.

Very similar to taking a cold camera inside a warm house where dinner is cooking and clothes are being washed. Cold camera, warm moist air, and it fogs.

 

[CmazzJK]

I went out this a.m as well to get some pictures of the river fog in sub zero temps, it was -1. I was only out for about a half an hour before both my hands went numb. All it took was to take my gloves off once to make an adjustment on my camera, my trip was shortened drastically... My pictures turned out crappy and I about got frost bite, but nothing is cooler than watching the condensation from the sub zero air on the water surface in the morning.

 

[TCampbell]

Something else likely caused the problem. Condensation will only form when a surface has a temperature which is at or below the "dew point" based on the humidity level of the air. The dew point is always less than the current temperature unless it is raining (or some other form of precipitation). Since the camera was warmer than the cold winter air, it is not possible for condensation to form on the camera.

In astronomy, we DO let our scopes "cool down" but this is because of a problem with thermal distortion. The large mirrors, lenses, and even the optical tubes themselves, have thermal mass. While their temperature is warmer than the air around them, they will give off thermal distortions -- heat currents (the same sort of thing you see if you look just above a burning candle flame). This is noticeable in telescopes because the lens has more mass than a camera lens AND because the angular field of view is very very tiny -- so even a small amount of distortion is noticeable. It's not typically a problem for regular cameras because the angular field of view is pretty wide at most typical focal lengths (the focal length of my primary telescope is 3556mm and the corrector plate and primary mirror are nearly 16" across -- the angular field of view when using an APS-C sensor camera is only about 45 arc-minutes... less than a degree.) Typical camera lenses won't have noticeable thermal distortion (they technically do have the distortions, but I'm not sure you'd be able to detect it.)

After the camera has chilled.... and then you bring it into the WARM (and typically higher humidity) INDOOR air... THEN all the condensation will hit. It's sort of like putting your beer mug in the freezer for an hour and noticing how everything condenses on it as soon as you take it out.

 

[robbins.photo]

Are you sure you didn't breathe on the front element of the lens, OR get your warm hands close to the cold front element???

But wait, if he breathed on it wouldn't that have destroyed the lens? rotfl

[Run Away! Run Away!]

 

[JerryLove]

Something else likely caused the problem. Condensation will only form when a surface has a temperature which is at or below the "dew point" based on the humidity level of the air. The dew point is always less than the current temperature unless it is raining (or some other form of precipitation). Since the camera was warmer than the cold winter air, it is not possible for condensation to form on the camera.

Is there air inside a lens?
Does this air have a dew point?
Is it possible for the glass at the front of the lens to get colder than the dew point of the air inside of the lens?
What happens then?

 

[robbins.photo]

Something else likely caused the problem. Condensation will only form when a surface has a temperature which is at or below the "dew point" based on the humidity level of the air. The dew point is always less than the current temperature unless it is raining (or some other form of precipitation). Since the camera was warmer than the cold winter air, it is not possible for condensation to form on the camera.

Is there air inside a lens?
Does this air have a dew point?
Is it possible for the glass at the front of the lens to get colder than the dew point of the air inside of the lens?
What happens then?

Umm... Armageddon?

I never was good at all this sciency stuff. Lol

 

[Newtricks]

In astronomy, we DO let our scopes "cool down" but this is because of a problem with thermal distortion. The large mirrors, lenses, and even the optical tubes themselves, have thermal mass. While their temperature is warmer than the air around them, they will give off thermal distortions -- heat currents (the same sort of thing you see if you look just above a burning candle flame). This is noticeable in telescopes because the lens has more mass than a camera lens AND because the angular field of view is very very tiny -- so even a small amount of distortion is noticeable. It's not typically a problem for regular cameras because the angular field of view is pretty wide at most typical focal lengths (the focal length of my primary telescope is 3556mm and the corrector plate and primary mirror are nearly 16" across -- the angular field of view when using an APS-C sensor camera is only about 45 arc-minutes... less than a degree.) Typical camera lenses won't have noticeable thermal distortion (they technically do have the distortions, but I'm not sure you'd be able to detect it.)

Thank you Tim, way cool and more information than I expected.

Anthony

 

[apaflo]

Is there air inside a lens?
Does this air have a dew point?
Is it possible for the glass at the front of the lens to get colder than the dew point of the air inside of the lens?
What happens then?

That is a very good question!

And I have seen that happen too. But normally for a small lens it would probably be unilikely unless the lens is stored in a very humid enviornment. The distinction is that there just isn't much air inside a lens, and there isn't enough volume that it will have much in the way of convection flow to get enough air close the the lens surface. Hence normally it would be so slight and be gone so fast that nobody would notice. However...

The one time I did see it was pretty memorable. I had a 400mm f/2.8 lens fog up in exactly that way. The inside of the front lens surface got fogged when I poked a warm lens out the window of a warm vehicle into 0F air. (Trust me, if you see your 400mm f/2.8 lens get totally fogged on the inside, it puts butterflies in your gut until it goes away without need for professional cleaning!)

But I suspect the huge air volume inside a rather large lens like the 400mm f/2.8 is what allows that, as opposed to smaller lenses. I've never had it happen with a 70-200mm f/2.8 for example.