by Nate Kennedy

You wake on a cold, wet morning and outside your tent you brew coffee on your collapsible camping table as rain pours down and collects in the hood of your raincoat. Your camera bag is in your tent, your camera inside it. Because of the clouds there isn’t much light. You’ll need to change lenses for the morning shots, and you’ll want to remove the polarizing filter. Water drips from your raincoat on to the camera as you wrestle with the changes. If it’s going to keep raining, you think, you can either cover your gear somehow or stow it and shoot another day.

The afternoon sun is blazing as you ride as the passenger due West somewhere along the Colorado – Utah border. The truck in front of you has been kicking up a blinding shield of dust for the last five miles and you feel the grit on your teeth, the dust darkens the wrinkles at the corner of your eyes. You should have your camera in its bag, you know, but there are too many opportunities to shoot when the expedition stops, and too many opportunities to shoot out the window as you drive. Putting the camera away means losing many photos, keeping it out means exposing it to dust. What to do?

It’s a cold February morning, but the snow is not too deep this year. You and some friends have been eye-balling an impassable summer trail, and figure that with a little winching, you should be able to get through while the swamp is frozen. The air temperature has been hovering around ten degrees F, and promises to remain about the same, save the wind chill factor. You will be comfortably in your truck, however, where the moisture from your breath and the heat that you have on high will make for a sixty-plus degree temperature change. The mechanisms inside your camera are certain to capture that moisture, and when you inevitably jump out of the truck to get the shot, will freeze. How to compensate?

Your family has said No Way to another expedition – they want to go to the beach! You pack your things and head to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and plant yourself comfortably at table, beneath a large umbrella, as your server happily brings you cerveza and civeche and the surf creeps closer and closer as the tide slowly moves in. Your kids want to splash and play in the waves, you want to capture unique photos of the action. The crash of each wave unleashes a slight, but compounding, bit of salt and water into the air, and you realize that you need to clean the salt from your sunglasses. You think about your camera…

These are certainly not all of the environmental conditions you could come across on an expedition, and there will be many days that involve two or more unique scenarios that you’ll have to compensate for. What do you need to be aware of, and what steps do you have to take, to keep your gear operating throughout your trip, let alone year after year?

Below are the things that I’ve done to keep the camera clicking. I don’t assume that my ways are always right, or that there aren’t better ways out there, but these have worked for me. When extra equipment is needed, I’ll show a home-brewed solution if I can, but sometimes things are just better handled by having proper store-bought gear. It’s up to you to decide, but I’ll give you links to some trustworthy products.

There is more to moisture problems than just the rain and direct water. There is humidity, too, which is somewhat of a silent killer of equipment.

To deal with the actual rainfall, I take a plastic freezer bag and snip (or bite, tear – whatever) a piece of one corner. With the lens hood IN PLACE, I put the camera inside the bag and press the lens through the corner opening. The plastic stretches – but only as far as you push it. It will hold it’s position over the lens hood fairly well, particularly if you keep it in place with hockey tape, which won’t leave residue, but can handle the moisture. Using the lens hood as your connection point keeps the rain drops off your lens – so long as you doing point it directly at the rain! Watch out for twisting and zooming of your lens – that can change the whole situation quickly. If your camera isn’t covered by the bag you chose, upgrade. Your hand and your camera should fit inside, and you should be able to take some pretty serious rainfall without concern.

Feel free to use different styles of plastic bags. I use clear plastic freezer bags when I’m going be mobile and off-tripod because you can see the digital camera screen through them and make adjustments as needed. A camera on-tripod might be best paired with a trash bag, however, as you can stick your head inside to make adjustments, and let it drop down to keep out the rain when you aren’t shooting.

Humidity is at its max when you are shooting in the rain, which means you need to pay attention to your camera even when direct water contact is not a risk. Sticking your camera beneath your raincoat to keep it dry actually compounds moisture problems. Raincoats, unfortunately, keep water in as well as they keep water out. Add a little body heat, and moisture is just floating around in there, looking for a place to collect… like on your CCD chip. If you’re carrying your camera in the plastic bag, like above, keep it there until you get to safe cover.

For a store-bought solution to moisture prevention, check out the (WATERATOR 2000)

Your main concern is dust. It’s everywhere, and it’s un-relenting. Even if it’s not kicked up by a vehicle cruising at 15mph, it’s there, and it’s looking for the inside of your camera. The good news is that your camera is most likely pretty well sealed against dust. Problem solved, right? Wrong. Where things move on the camera, all bets are off. Twist the On-Off switch. Go from the A setting to the M setting a few times. And, may the Force be with you, change a lens! Dust is as brutal as moisture, only it doesn’t evaporate once its run its course.

A little prevention goes a long way with dust. The freezer bag trick above works well in this scenario, too, but I guarantee that dust will still find your camera. Your big concern is dust getting inside, which usually happens when changing lenses. If you have to do it in a dusty area, make sure and protect yourself from the wind. Cover yourself and your camera with a blanket or a tarp as you change lenses on the front seat of your truck. A coat works fine, too, just something that will keep out new dust for a short time. And, by all means, make the change quick! Keep the camera body pointed down when the opening is exposed, and get a lens on there ASAP.

After a day of shooting in dusty conditions, it’s time to pull out the canned air. A few quick squirts can go a long way to clear grit from some of the deeper recesses that you can’t see. Go easy, though – if you squeeze too hard and the air comes out too fast, it can get pushed in deeper rather than be released. It’s like using a pressure washer to wash your truck: Use enough force to get the mud off, but don’t peel the paint.

First Rule: Keeping the camera warm enough to operate. Don’t put your camera inside your jacket by your body! If it’s small, you can use an outside pocket. But if you are thinking of hanging it around your neck, and putting your parka over the top to keep it warm, think again. The moisture from your body will – I repeat – WILL – get inside the camera, and once you bring it out to snap a photo, it will freeze, possibly with disastrous results. Do everything you can to keep your camera away from moisture in cold environments – I can’t stress that enough.

Second Rule: Reheating. When you are done shooting for the day, don’t just bring your camera in to a room-temperature environment and let it acclimate on its own. That’s far too fast for the plastic and glass components! After a day of cold weather shooting (below freezing), your best bet is to put your camera and lenses in to freezer bags (get ones big enough to completely seal around your gear), and put all of it back in to the bag you used in the field that day. Two things happen: first, the warming of the bag itself prevents the gear from warming too quickly, and second, any moisture that has inadvertently built up on or in your gear will settle on the inside of the freezer bag, not on the gear itself.

This brings up another cold weather no-no: Do not, EVER, breathe on your camera in cold weather. When you bring it to your eye to take a photograph, hold your breath. Exhale after the camera is away from your face. Don’t think your breath holds much moisture? Put on a pair of glasses and cup your hands around your mouth, nose and eyes. Exhale. The moisture you released was warm enough to get to your glasses, but the cold is cold enough to freeze it – almost instantly. The same thing happens inside your camera, and your camera is really close your mouth and nose when you take a picture. Be mindful!

Ahh, what a fine place to relax! A good ocean beach has so much to offer photographically. If you’re lucky, you’re camping, as well, and your truck is close by. But whether you flew in to town or drove there, the salt air is still the salt air, and the sand is still the sand, and you will have to deal with both. The beach is somewhat easier to control than the other scenarios, but its effects can be equally destructive if you don’t mind your gear.

Salt air is ever-present. It will cover everything, but it won’t penetrate far. A good t-shirt can cover your thousands of dollars worth of gear as well as a $300 camera bag can. You’re at the beach, anything could happen, and you want to have your camera close. I typically put mine on the table at my side, or in a beach bag, wrapped up in a t-shirt. It’s not pretty, but it gets the job done, and the camera is ready at a moment’s notice. When changing lenses, be sure the camera and the lens are protected at all times, and keep the body facing down.

The sand is a bit trickier because it creeps about in so many places. It sticks to your skin, it flies up from the cloth chair you’re sitting on, it clings to your towel until you shake it loose. It also has a tendency to cling to the t-shirt you are using to protect your gear from the salt air. If your camera is underneath, beside, or within shaking distance of these things, the sand will get inside. Be especially careful changing lenses, as that’s when this course sand will do most of its damage.

Again, these are not, by any means, all of the environmental conditions you will come across while on expedition. They give a good introduction, however, to the dangers your gear will face. Use this information to create your own protective solutions for your own unique situations.

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