cinematography Trying to keep lenses from fogging in the winter.

[harmonica44]

I have a short I am planning on shooting outdoors, soon, the only problem is, is that it's cold outside and I am having problems with the lenses fogging. Do I just do a take until it fogs, then say cut, and wipe it off and continue each time, or is their a better way?

Thanks.

 

[stef]

To keep condensation from mucking up all the innards of your camera, seal it in a plastic bag before you go outside. Do the same with lenses. A half-hour should be plenty of time to let the camera come up to temp.

No! Do not bag equipment in plastic when going outside! That will cause more condensation.

But when going the other direction (taking a cold lens into a warm environment), then wrap in a paper towel and bag it in plastic.

Think about how it works. Warm air absorbs more moisture than cold air. (That's why hairdryers work.) When you take a lens full of warm air outside, it will have a lot of absorbed moisture that the cold temperature will precipitate out ... and it will land on your camera. If you bag it, it'll hold that moisture in with your equipment. Letting the lens "breathe" (to misuse the term) will let the moist air be lost before it precipitates it out. I pull the lens off my camera and waive it around when going outside, then zoom/focus the lens to min focus distance and back to infinity to pump the air out.

Going the other direction, with cold gear into a warm environment, your equipment cools the warm air passing over it, causing it to cool and precipitate water onto the equipment. For this, you do NOT want it to contact the warm, moist air, so bagging it is the proper thing to do.

I had the "stopped recording" problem on my t3i. it is a setting that quits recording after 12 minutes of continuous shooting.

This is due to the 4GB filesize of the FAT filesystem on the memory card. It does not automatically advance to a new file. Some experiements were done in magic lantern to try to open a new file, but it was causing some frames to drop. I don't know if they've solved this. You can get more time by shooting smaller, e.g. 720p.

 

[harmonica44]

Okay thanks. Does the bag have to be made of plastic or anything? What if I just use the camera kit bag?

 

[8salacious9]

Take your bag with camera equipment outside leave it for 10-15 minutes everything should be about right.

If you read the instructions with your lens or online it will tell you what to do.