Reykjavik, Iceland

[Bryan Mitchell]

Does the XL1s stand up to the cold? I plan on going to Iceland in the future to shoot footage/short/anything because I think its one of the most beautiful places there is, and its pretty cheap to get to, stay at, and get home. Will the cold weather hurt my XL1s? Is there something I could buy to protect it?

Right now it's 50* F and 76% humid with 5mph wind, just to give you an idea of the conditions.

[Bryan Mitchell]

I was looking around on B&H and found http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=162134&is=REG

Seems pretty good as far as the temp goes. Will this protect against humidity?

[Markus Aalto]

Hi, I'm not sure how cold it can be in Iceland, and I think that the humidity is the main problem there. However, I've been shooting at -17 F (-27 Celsius) and wrote about it in thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...=&threadid=553

When shooting in cold weather (especially less than 32* F, or 0* C) the problem is the humidity when moving from indoors to outdoors. You must balance the temperature for at least 2 hours to get the camera body temperature the same as the outdoors or indoors temperature. And if you are going to shoot several times on the same day, you do NOT take the camera indoors at all during the day, but leave it outdoors in the cold. Of course, you can load the batteries inside.

However, this is how we do it here in Finland, and the climat in Iceland is very very different because of the hot fountains.

But hey, if you are looking for exotic places, you can always come to Finland ;-)

http://www.laplandfinland.com/conten...sp?deptid=7405

Cheers!

[Rick Bravo]

Bryan,

Although I can't answer the cold question, I can give you some heat info if only for storing away in your memory banks.

I documented the aftermath of the boiler room explosion on the S.S. Norway on Memorial Day weekend here at the Port of Miami. The interior temperatures of the ship were well above 150 degrees farenheit. The operating temp for the camera, as specified in the manual is 120 degrees F. I was in the ship for the better part of two hours with the temperature constant and a very high degree of humidity. The Xl performed admirably.

As for your cold question, we "winterized" film cameras when we were shooting in extreme cold. This usually meant replacing any liquid lubricants with dry ones, keeping film from freezing, etc. I am not sure if that is the case with video cameras.

I would imagine that tape becomes brittle with cold so it should be protected, but then again, you might not want to insert an 84 degree tape into a camera that has been acclimated to 17 below!

I will be looking forward to your post-shoot post!

RB

[Markus Aalto]

Hi Rick,

It was -17 in fahrenheit, not 17 ;-)

[Rick Bravo]

Ouch! And I thought our Miami winters were bad!!!

[Keith Loh]

There was a digital film made in Iceland that was at the Vancouver International Film Festival. It was called "Salt". Unfortunately, I didn't get to see it.