Cold Weather Photo Survival Guide

Cold can affect digital cameras; here's what to expect.

Dave Johnson

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Feature: Cold Weather Photo Survival Guide

I recently watched a documentary about a mission to the Antarctic. Faced with temperatures rivaled only on some of the outer planets, the team routinely had equipment failures from the hundred-below-zero temperatures and frigid windstorms. Indeed, the film in their cameras--this trip predated digital photography--became so brittle from the cold that it actually broke, ruining many rolls of pictures.

Thankfully, it's rare that we have to withstand such extremes. But it certainly is wintertime, and cold weather can affect the performance of our digital cameras. It pays to know what to expect.

Batteries and Cold Don't Mix

First and foremost, remember that batteries don't like cold weather one bit. Outdoors in winter, it's not unusual for your digital camera's batteries to give up in less than half the time they ordinarily last in more temperate conditions. It's a good idea to carry a set of spares, especially if you plan to document the construction of an entire snowman.

Here's a tip that has worked on many winter excursions: I keep my spare batteries in an inside pocket, where they can benefit from my body heat. When it's time to swap, I put the "dead" cells in that pocket so they can warm up a bit. If I need to, I can put those batteries back in the camera--they'll often be good for a few more shots after they've warmed up a bit.

Beware of Temperature Changes

When you bring the camera back indoors, odds are good that you'll get some condensation on the lens. Be patient. It's a bad idea to wipe the lens off to take more pictures: You can scratch the lens in the process. Also, if you wipe the lens and the condensation pools up around the edges, it can leak into the inside of the lens assembly. That's a really bad thing. So let the condensation evaporate on its own; it shouldn't take long.

Likewise, don't bring your camera in from the cold for just a few minutes, then rush outdoors with it again. If you do, the condensation won't have a chance to evaporate, but will instead freeze on (and perhaps even inside) the camera, possibly damaging it.

Incidentally, you can minimize condensation by keeping your camera in its case or camera bag when you bring it inside, and giving the camera enough time for the temperatures to equalize before removing it. That will slow down the temperature change enough that condensation never forms.

Snow Can Confuse Your Camera

Finally, winter isn't just cold; in much of the country it's notorious for covering the landscape with a wet, white substance known as snow. And while snow can make for pretty pictures, it also has a reputation for confusing your camera's exposure system. Since snow is so reflective, it can force the camera to underexpose the darker, less reflective subject in your scene. So your pictures often end up too dark or muddy.

The solution? If your camera has a "sand and snow" programmed exposure mode, use it. If not, set its exposure compensation dial to overexpose the picture by about 1 or 1.5 stops. When you get out of the snow, remember to switch your camera's mode so you don't end up overexposing your other pictures.

Dave's Favorites: Release Your Inner Child With FingerPaint

When we think of image editing, we usually means things like cropping, resizing, and color correction. Recently, though, I discovered MindScope Software's FingerPaint, which offers an interesting array of realistic painting tools for modifying images.

What can you do with FingerPaint? You can convert a digital photo into a finger-painted masterpiece, for instance, by tracing over the lines in your picture with authentic-looking brush strokes, paint textures, and canvas styles. There's a cool "finger" tool that lets you smear and feather your picture as if you were working with real paint. The program also comes with a small collection of filters and effects.

FingerPaint is easy to learn since it mimics the Adobe Photoshop experience; there's a number of floating palettes for selecting tools, brushes, strokes, and settings. But without tips to help explain the purpose of each tool, the tool palette is disappointingly mysterious. Nonetheless, FingerPaint is quite affordable: You can download a free trial, or buy the full program for a mere $20. At that price, it's well worth investigating.

Q&A: Avoid Duplicate File Names When Downloading Pictures

When I download pictures to the My Pictures folder on my computer, the file names always have the same sequence of numbers, so files with those names already exist on my PC. Since I want to store all my pictures in one folder so that I can copy them onto a CD later, when I try to put my new pictures in that folder they overwrite the old ones. Changing all the file names one by one is one solution, but it's laborious. What should I do?

--Tahir Butt, London, England

It sounds like your camera is restarting the file numbers back at 0001 with every new batch of pictures you take, Tahir. I've seen this problem with a few cameras, and it's annoying.

Usually this happens only if you reformat the memory card after each batch of pictures. But a few, thankfully rare, cameras seem to reset the numbering every time you take a new batch of pictures, whether or not you reformat the card. So, my first bit of advice is to avoid formatting the camera's memory card. Instead, just delete the images from the card after you've transferred them to the PC. That will probably prevent the numbers from getting reset.

That said, Tahir, it sounds like you're not giving your digital photos useful names once they are on the PC. That's too bad, because if you have a few thousand pictures that all have names like DSC0023187, how do you locate a specific image? It's a good idea to rename your files after they land on your PC, and that will avoid the file name conflict you're running into. You might want to try a $20 program called Name Dropper, which makes it easy to create descriptive names for large batches of pictures quickly.

You could also just let Microsoft Windows rename your image files while they're still on the camera. Connect your digital camera and open the folder in My Computer that represents your camera so you can see its contents. Then select all of your image files, right-click, and choose Rename. Type a name and press Enter. All of the pictures are renamed at once, with a sequential number added after the name you gave them.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

This Week's Hot Pic: "Vanity," by Barry Goggin, Verona, New Jersey

Barry says that he was recently photographing an egret in his local park one evening while it preened. He was spot metering to avoid blowing out his subject--a common problem when photographing white birds.

He says, "I was interested in capturing how flexible its neck was when it suddenly opened up its wings and put its head underneath to clean. Most of the background, including the egret's legs, had gone black due to the spot metering on the white. So, doing the opposite of your recent article on revealing hidden details, I decided to remove the remaining dark vegetation in Photoshop. I ended up with what I think is a pretty dramatic photo of a bird many people have photographed before."

The photo was taken with an Olympus C765.