How to take pictures in snow or rain — tips on how to protect your camera | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Do you want to cre­ate a spe­cial atmos­phere at the pho­to ses­sion with the help of dra­mat­ic pour­ing rain or fab­u­lous fluffy snow? Or were you unex­pect­ed­ly caught by pre­cip­i­ta­tion while work­ing in the open air?

You need to pre­pare for bad con­di­tions when shoot­ing out­doors so as not to break the equip­ment and squeeze the max­i­mum out of the sit­u­a­tion. We tell you how to pro­tect the cam­era dur­ing bad weath­er, as well as min­i­mize the risks when shoot­ing in the cold.

Pho­to: Eliz­a­beth Chechevic / instagram.com/chechevic_a

Shooting in the snow — life hacks and subtleties

Snow­fall can add mag­ic and cozi­ness to a shot, or cre­ate an atmos­phere of cold hope­less­ness and aloof­ness. These are the con­di­tions that you want to use to make the frame more inter­est­ing.

Snow­fall itself is rel­a­tive­ly safe for the cam­era. But mois­ture is dan­ger­ous. So the snow is harm­less until it starts to melt or gets stuck in the cam­era parts, from which it is dif­fi­cult to sweep it out. For exam­ple, in the hot shoe con­nec­tor, on which the flash and syn­chro­niz­er are attached.

The most impor­tant thing when shoot­ing in the snow is to make sure that it does not melt on the cam­era, and also to go into the premis­es, get into the car or put the cam­era in a case only after the equip­ment is com­plete­ly cleared of snow. This can be done with gloved hands, or use a dust blow­er and a brush from the optics clean­ing kit. Avoid blow­ing the snow off with your breath or remov­ing it with your fin­gers, as this will melt it.

The ide­al con­di­tions for shoot­ing in the snow are a slight frost, when it can be eas­i­ly shak­en off, and it does not melt when it hits the equip­ment and does not stick to it / Pho­to: Eliza­ve­ta Chechevit­sa / instagram.com/chechevic_a

Pay spe­cial atten­tion to the hot shoe, but­tons where snow can get stuck in their slots, and the lens. Espe­cial­ly if the lens is zoomed — when approach­ing or mov­ing away, its parts can extend and rotate. At this point, snow can stick to it, which then gets deep into the struc­ture.

How to protect your camera from snow

If you want to addi­tion­al­ly insure your­self so that you don’t have to pay for cam­era repairs lat­er, then the equip­ment should be iso­lat­ed from snow­fall as much as pos­si­ble. This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant if you are shoot­ing in sleet and sleet, when pre­cip­i­ta­tion melts instant­ly, increas­ing the risk of dam­ag­ing your cam­era.

– Pro­tect the lens with a lens hood or pro­tec­tive fil­ter (read how to choose a fil­ter).

Use the lens hood dur­ing snow­fall to keep it from stick­ing to the optics, or turn it upside down to pro­tect the “body” of the lens. The first will insure you from snow adher­ing to the lens.

Attach a pro­tec­tive fil­ter to the lens to pre­vent mois­ture from get­ting on the lens of the lens. This is not as dan­ger­ous as mois­ture that gets into the mov­ing parts of the lens, but there may be stains, droplets that will have to be removed in post-pro­cess­ing. With a pro­tec­tive fil­ter, snow can be quick­ly shak­en off with­out wor­ry­ing that you will scratch expen­sive optics.

— Take pic­tures while stand­ing under an umbrel­la. Please note that in this case you will need an assis­tant who will hold the umbrel­la over the cam­era, or pre­pare for incon­ve­nience. You can safe­ly hold an umbrel­la over the cam­era if you put it on a tri­pod (for how to choose a tri­pod and its main char­ac­ter­is­tics, read this text). Then you don’t have to hold both the umbrel­la and the cam­era at the same time.

— Wrap the cam­era in a rain­coat or the most com­mon bag. In the case of a fixed lens, you can also pro­tect it, and addi­tion­al­ly wrap it with tape on top so that the home-made water­proof cov­er does not move out.

A home­made case can keep the cam­era out of the snow, but it’s much less reli­able when it rains. We also do not rec­om­mend resort­ing to the advice that flood­ed the Inter­net — to hide the cam­era under a jack­et or in clothes between shoot­ings in the hope that dur­ing this short peri­od the mois­ture will not reach the equip­ment / Pho­to: Eliza­ve­ta Chechevit­sa / instagram.com/chechevic_a

– Always point the cam­era with the lens down to reduce the amount of snow that can get on the lens.

Shooting in winter — how to protect the camera from the cold

In win­ter, pho­to­graph­ic equip­ment is threat­ened not only by poten­tial­ly melt­ed snow, but also by cold. We have col­lect­ed life hacks on how to secure the cam­era while shoot­ing in the cold and there­by extend the life of the cam­era.

• Avoid con­den­sa­tion.

Con­den­sa­tion inside the cham­ber may form due to tem­per­a­ture fluc­tu­a­tions. For exam­ple, you took a cou­ple of shots in the cold, got into the car, and after a cou­ple of min­utes went back into the cold. Avoid such sit­u­a­tions and do not try to hide the cam­era in heat as soon as there is a pause.

• Don’t breathe on the lens.

It may seem very sim­ple to clear the lens of snow by breath­ing on it and brush­ing off the mois­ture. But, even if you shoot with a pro­tec­tive fil­ter, this can have a bad effect on the qual­i­ty of the shoot­ing. Frost can form on the glass, or the same con­den­sate can form, which will make the pic­ture dull and low-con­trast.

• Do not turn on the cam­era as soon as you return to the room from the cold.

Con­den­sa­tion can form in this way, which is harm­ful to equip­ment. It is best to let the cham­ber warm up grad­u­al­ly. To do this, leave it in the case or pho­to back­pack in which you brought it from the cold for a cou­ple of hours.

6 Ways to Protect Your Camera When Shooting in the Rain

Shoot­ing in the rain is always spec­tac­u­lar. Wet hair, slant­i­ng drops in the back­ground, play­ing with reflec­tions in pud­dles. These are unique con­di­tions dur­ing which you can get real­ly unusu­al and rare shots. We fig­ure out how to pho­to­graph in the rain to pro­tect pho­to­graph­ic equip­ment from mois­ture.

• Buy a water­proof pro­tec­tive case.

This is the best way, albeit not the cheap­est. The design of the case will ful­ly pro­tect all the ele­ments of your cam­era — from the “car­cass” to the lens of the lens. Sealed fin­ger inden­ta­tions are pro­vid­ed for press­ing the shut­ter but­ton, as well as turn­ing the focus or zoom ring. This water­proof case can even be used under­wa­ter!

Shoot­ing in a pro­tec­tive case made it pos­si­ble to take pic­tures from the water and not be afraid of the waves hit­ting the cam­era / Pho­to: Eliza­ve­ta Chechevit­sa / instagram.com/chechevic_a

Before buy­ing, con­sid­er a few points:

— The case will pro­tect the cam­era from any mois­ture, but you need to get used to shoot­ing with it. Turn­ing the focus ring can be quite dif­fi­cult, as well as look­ing into the viewfind­er through the mate­r­i­al of the case.

– Care­ful­ly study the dimen­sions of the cam­era and the lens with which you will take pic­tures in the case. Some man­u­fac­tur­ers indi­cate com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with cer­tain cam­eras that are sim­i­lar in size. For exam­ple, the Fla­ma FL-WP-S5 case. It does­n’t stretch and comes in one uni­ver­sal size, so you need to have a good under­stand­ing of what optics can fit in the case with your cam­era. In one case, you will have a large mar­gin, and you can even change the focal length, and in the oth­er, your zoom lens will “turn” into a prime, since there will be no room left in the case. For exam­ple, with such a cov­er it will hard­ly be pos­si­ble to shoot on a tele­pho­to.

– Read the instruc­tions before shoot­ing under­wa­ter. The case has a cer­tain num­ber of meters that you can dive with it. For exam­ple, the Fla­ma FL-WP-570 case pro­tects your equip­ment at a depth of up to 10 meters.

2. Hide! It is not nec­es­sary to run into the thick of bad weath­er. You can stay under a canopy, take pic­tures from a room or an open car win­dow.

An alter­na­tive to shoot­ing in the rain or in the water is a pho­to stu­dio with an aqua­zone / Pho­to: Eliza­ve­ta Chechevit­sa / instagram.com/chechevic_a

2. Shoot under an umbrel­la. To make it eas­i­er for your­self, take a tri­pod so you don’t have to hold the cam­era and umbrel­la at the same time, or find an assis­tant.

3. Wrap your cam­era in a rain­coat, rain­coat, or jack­et. The main thing is to choose a mate­r­i­al that does not get wet.

4. Build a home­made pro­tec­tive case from the bag. Please note that it will obvi­ous­ly lose in tight­ness to a pur­chased case. In addi­tion, rain is much more dan­ger­ous than snow. If you can sim­ply shake off the snow in the cold, then it will not work so eas­i­ly with drops. There­fore, just in case, take with you microfiber cloths and cloths that absorb mois­ture well.

5. Put on the lens hood and pro­tec­tive fil­ter to pro­tect the lens from drops.