Bessa L in the Artic Circle

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Following my return from the beautiful, but extremely cold Finnish Lapland, just thought I'd put a few thoughts on how my Bessa L performed in such extreme conditions.

I only took the L and 12mm Heliar combination as the Industar duplicated my standard zoom on my Nikon DSLR. Also the virtually focus-free operation of the 12mm meant less fiddling in -20C conditions - all to the good! The camera performed faultlessly. The exposure meter was consistent (whether consistently accurate I will see when the slides return) and matched my Leningrad 4 hand-held on the few occasions when I checked one against the other. There were no problems with any of the mechanics, the battery was fine, and no film wind-on issues were found.

It was so cold at times outside that ice formed on the camera body when brought indoors, but there were no problems doing the reverse. I found that if I kept my thermal inner gloves on, I could change exposure settings without losing all sensation, although fingers started to feel cold pretty quickly when doing this.

I didn't take quite as many pictures as I'd hoped partly due to my injury, but I'm hoping for a reasonable crop of keepers when I get them back. I'll post as soon as I can, doctors permitting.

Regards

Andy

 

[pvdhaar]

First of all, get well soon Andy!

And of course, we're always interested in wideangle shots of polar bears in the snow 😀

 

[Skinny McGee]

Yeah Cant wait to see!

 

[wrenhunter]

Sounds like a (mostly) great trip. I look forward to seeing your photos.

 

[laverda3c]

A helpful tip

A helpful tip

Andy wrote:

It was so cold at times outside that ice formed on the camera body when brought indoors, but there were no problems doing the reverse.

Hey Andy,

I shoot quite regularily in -20C and below. The way to remove the build up of ice happening on a camera when you bring it indoors is to put it in a large zip lock freezer bag outside. Then when you come indoors the condensation forms on the outside of the bag not on the camera. Preventing ice build up on the camera.

Can't wait to see the 12mm shots.

Cheers,

Mark -%)

 

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No Polar bears (sadly!) but got a few Reindeer. We were lucky enough to go and watch some Reindeer racing which was a real eye-opener. The extremely colourful Saamish people with their fox-fur hats and reindeer skin boots - a bit like an English point-to-point meeting with fur instead of tweed! made for a memorable morning, and the racing complete with air-ambulance on standby was surprisingly speedy too.

Thanks BTW for the tip on the Ziplock bag too.

Andy