Sunday, March 24, 2013

Skiing video

I did some filming during my ski outing two weeks ago. The result can be seen below:



I encountered some technical problems this time. The GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition let me down again with its poor battery life and I only got the clip from 0:22-0:33 in the video with it. I had some special angles for the GoPro planned, but didn't get the possibility to try them. It might be the best action camera currently available, but it doesn't work when it's cold. It seems the battery is drained even when the camera is turned off and the old trick of having the batteries in a warm place and inserting them only when needed isn't really an alternative with the weatherproof housing and all. To be honest, I had a third party battery (still can't get a spare original battery here in Turku), which seems even worse than the original GoPro one. On the other hand, my Panasonic GH2 handles cold very well and only used up the capacity of about one and a half battery.

The other problem has to do with the cold and moisture condensation on the lenses. You have to be very careful not to breath out near the camera, but still the front lens often get some amount of condensation freezing to ice from the surrounding air when it is cold. It is fairly simple to get rid of simply by warming it and wiping it off with a finger, though. This time, and actually a week later as well, I encountered condensation on other lens surfaces as well, which is more difficult to handle. I'm not sure how or why this happens, but it occurred when the temperature rose rapidly from a temperature colder than -20C. Presumably the lenses had not warmed at all being inside the camera bag, and when I took them out in a temperature of -10C the humidity level was already higher causing condensation on the lens surfaces when the lens caps were removed. This has not occurred when the temperatures stay cold all day.

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