Lessons Learned

[Paul]

Just wanted to pass along a couple of lessons I learned this past trip to WDW. ; After arriving the night before and missing out on Fantasmic due to torrential rains, we headed to the Magic Kingdom for our frst full day. ; I was very excited to be back with the family and ready to take many photos.

My first attempt was to take some shots of the ferrys over to MK when I pulled my camera out of the bag, took off the lens cap and saw a steamed up lens and viewfinder! I tried to wipe the lens dry with a lens cloth, but since the camera was still cold and the air humid it just steamed back up. ; No shots for me yet. ; From that day on I made sure the camera was placed inside a closet at our Marriott Vacation Club room where the temp was a bit warmer. ; I also took the camera outside of my camera bag as soon as I got outside of the rental car on the way to the tram and even tried to place the camera in the sun to warm it up.

Another thing I started to do was try to keep the camera close to my body when going inside a store or ride which was cool when I was not using it, hoping to keep the camera's temp as steady as possible.

Now on the way to the MK that morning, the camera did warm up and everything looked good to go, except when I tried to turn the camera on, no dice! No power at all! ; My fear of course is that I somehow damaged the camera with the moisture or the camera sensed the moisture and would not turn on until it completely dried out.

For the rest of that day whenever I we stopped for a break I would pull out the camera and my hair trying to figure out what was wrong. ; Both batteries were fully charged! ; Nothing.

Finally, when I got back to the room I decided to check the troubleshooting section to that thing called a manual. ;

Power

Symptom: The camera does not operate even when the power switch is set to <ON>.

- The battery is not properly installed in the camera. ; Nope not that

- Make sure the battery compartment cover is closed. ; Yes, it is closed, not that

- Make sure the CF card slot (oh no....) cover is closed. ; BINGO

When I had pulled my camera out of the bag it was tough to get out and apparently I had pulled the CF door open just enough to disable the power, but not to actually see it was ajar!

Now I had my manual with me when I was in the park since I always have it in the bag, but I did not think to actually look at when I was there. ; Hopefully next time I will remember! ; No MK pictures that day, just because I did not READ the manual when I needed to.

 

[zackiedawg]

Yep...I know that lens fog and camera fog issue intimately. ; I get it all the time, at home too...that lovely Florida heat and humidity that forces us all to use air conditioning 24-hours a day creates that problem.

At Disney - my advice is if you have a room with a private balcony (meaning one where you're not on the ground floor), the best method I've found is to stick my camera outside on the balcony a good 10-20 minutes before I'm ready to leave the room. ; Let it go through the slow warming process inside a camera bag or towel. ; By the time you're ready to leave, grab the camera, quickly through the room, and you're out the door - the camera should be well past the fogging stage and ready to go. ; if you don't have a balcony, then keeping the camera tucked away as much as possible - inside a bag, wrapped in a towel, inside a closet or drawer, etc. so it is out of the direct air stream and hopefully a bit warmer than the rest of your room - will help.

Haven't experienced the memory card door issue...but I did once head over to Downtown Disney with my camera in hand, only to discover when I went to take a photo that my battery was still back at the room sitting on the charger. ; D'oh!

 

[Roger]

I think the most recent batch from the major companies have "fixed" the little "card door" "feature" that was a problem. ; The feature being that all card activity would stop upon opening the door, or prohibit operation.....

 

[Dan]

I believe I can go you guys one better. ; I have dealt with condensation with my cameras, but I've also had it effect my camcorder usage.

I feel like this is becoming a problem of the past, a relic of the analog era... ; but once upon a time, when people used VCRs instead of optical based video players (DVD or Bluray), all players had a warning indicator to show that they were having a problem with condensation. ; Often they had a dedicated indicator light that I imagine most people would never see in normal use.

For me personally this came to a head one day in Disney World. ; I was waiting in line for the opening at Animal Kingdom and the remote controlled palm tree was out mingling with the crowd. ; I took my camcorder out, which had of course been kept in an air conditioned room. ; I stashed it in my pack before I left the room, and my backpack can keep things cool for a significant amount of time. ; It's not exactly insulated, but strong temperature differentials can persist for an hour or more after going outside.

So I started taping the palm tree as it did it's thing, exchanging witticisms with the crowd. ; Eventually it turned its attention to me.. just as I got the "dew" warning indicator on my screen. ; I'd seen that indicator (inactive, but I knew of the warning from the instructions) on my gear for so long but it had never been a problem. ; But at that moment, as it approached me, my camcorder shut down, telling me that water had condensed somewhere on the tape mechanism and it had to stop while the water evaporated.

And I'm forced to lower my camcorder in shame as the tree reaches me.

I'm still not sure exactly what it said.. but I think it said something like "thanks for videotaping me, Spielberg". ; I gathered the meaning was to poke fun at me for stopping filming it just as it reached me.

I still wonder what it might have said if I hadn't developed a case of dew at such an inopportune moment.


I'm still working on this problem for this fall. ; It's kind of a weird story, but if I can I might end up staying with complete strangers in a hotel room for a convention this fall. ; Eh.. it's a heck of a lot cheaper than taking a room for myself, and in the end it probably saves me money over driving out every day to the event. ; BUT... I'm just not that trusting, I don't think I'd be willing to leave over $2000 worth of camera gear sitting in the room with strangers while I sleep. ; So the alternative is to keep it in my trunk, subjected to quite cold temperatures overnight. ; That's fine, the gear can certainly tolerate zero degree temperatures, at least if it's off, but how do I get it heated up again to deal with indoor temperatures?

The only idea I have at the moment is to bring some of those instant hot packs along. ; Oh sure, it's a wacky solution and kind of a waste, and I worry the heat I might be too strong.. but otherwise it'll take a long time to get my camera and all my lenses heated up to ambient temperature. ; What I need is a battery powered heating unit that can use rechargeable batteries..

Anyway, that's this fall, I'll have some time to think about this odd little technical difficulty. ; And then after that the usual challenge of winter zoo shooting. ; Where having your camera and lens be too hot can also be a problem. ; I'm still not certain, but it seems that the lens being too warm can make your shots a little blurry. ; I know it's an issue with astronomy, there you have to wait until your telescope reaches ambient temperature (some larger units have cooling fans to speed the process) before it produces the best results.

And if I do let my gear cool down to the outside ambient temperature then I have a problem if I want to go inside. ; Woe betide the poor fool that dares go into Tropic World (a very humid and warm environment meant to mimic a rainforest) with cold optics. ; It can be refreshing to go into there in the winter, a brief warmup can be nice, but I have to keep my camera and lens zipped tight inside my jacket so it's somewhat buffered from the rampant humidity. ; And then I end up inside a very warm environment but I dare not even unzip my jacket.

I end up rushing to get back outside where at least I'm dressed appropriately.

 

[zackiedawg]

Ooh! Ooh! I've got another story...

Oh...camera bags can retain that cold inside the camera for an amazing length of time! ; Another story - I neglected to put my camera outside to account for the cold AC on a hot summer night, so my camera was sitting out, on a table, in the open, waiting to load the batteries in the morning which were sitting on the charger. ; That morning, I loaded the batteries, packed the camera into the camera bag, and went off to the parks. ; I walked out to the resort bus stop, waited 20 minutes for the bus, rode the bus for 15-20 minutes to the Magic Kingdom, get off, went through security (even opening the bag, albeit briefly), then through the gates, then under the tunnel, and finally upon reaching the center rotunda area, I set up my tripod and pulled out the camera to take my first shots of the day.

On order were some slow shutter daytime shots - I already had my ND400 filter on the lens, and just needed to mount the camera to the tripod, turn it on, set the shutter and aperture, and fire. ; Crazy thing about the ND400 filter - you can't see a darn thing through it - black as night. ; It's an 8-stop filter, so I actually rely on the camera's autofocus to find something to focus on through the filter (the camera can 'see' infrared light that I cannot, so it can still autofocus even when the LCD shows me nothing). ; Unfortunately, that also means I couldn't notice the fact that the camera inside was completely fogged out.

Here was one of my first shots:

[attachimg=1]

Oops. ; The next 4 minutes were spent furiously trying to warm up the camera - putting it inside my shirt, against my skin, waving it around, etc...until that fog circle kept shrinking and shrinking and finally went away. ; 4 minutes after the first attempt with the ND400, I was able to get the shot I wanted:

[attachment deleted by admin]

 

[Tim]

impressive, justin. ; i have an ND400 and really need to use it more.

 

[Dan]

Huh... that's very interesting. ; It can AF even when you can't see a thing through the VF?

That surprises me. ; So... is the filter not blocking the near IR band? ; I seem to recall reading something about that.. but I'm not sure.

You reminded me of another situation where I've run into serious dew. ; Taking star trail pictures.

Once again this is an issue for astronomy too. ; Once you get your optics cooled down to ambient temperature you risk getting water condensing on them. ; At night when the conditions are right, anyway. ; Some telescopes even have heating units. ; It's kind of funny, first they use fans to speed up the cooling process, then once they're cooled down they want to keep them at least slightly above ambient to keep the condensation away.

I wasn't taking this into account and left my camera sitting on the deck with a timer set to keep taking a series of long exposures. ; I returned after a while and discovered the whole thing covered in dew. ; When I looked at the pictures I could see the point when the water started accumulating. ; It lasted nearly a half an hour before that started, in the future I'm thinking that I might be able to point an IR heater (the sort of thing that radiates heat rather than blowing hot air) at my camera and just keep it warm enough to ward off the dew. ; I'm also toying with the idea of making some sort of low energy heating element that could transfer only just enough heat to the lens to keep it above ambient temperature.

 

[zackiedawg]

Huh... that's very interesting. ; It can AF even when you can't see a thing through the VF?

That surprises me. ; So... is the filter not blocking the near IR band? ; I seem to recall reading something about that.. but I'm not sure.

Correct. ; Actually, the ND400 can serve pretty well as an IR-photography filter, as it does stop almost all visible light while still letting IR go through. ; When I first bought the filter many years ago, I bought it to use with my Sony F717, which was a digital camera that had a 'night vision' mode, which essentially flipped the hot mirror out of the path so the camera was completely sensitive to IR light...you just needed a filter to cut the visible light out.