CENSORED!!!!! Who deleted the link in my signature ?

[c.poulton]

I'll probably take the Bessa anyway to see how it's doing. 🙂

In addition, I'll take a Canon AE-1P. I had it with me two years ago when I was doing field research and I know it to work fine. I've attached a few pictures. The first three are from Kazan' in Tatarstan, on the coldest day of the winter when it went down to -27 (note the little icicles in the girl's eyelashes). The last one is a frozen canal in Moscow at -20 or so.

My hat goes off to you! - (shot three is my favourite, btw) I remember reading on this forum some time ago that under extream temeratures you have to be really careful with film - wind on slowly to stop the film from snapping. I guess the other problem would be operating the camera with gloves on? I've only ever used a camera down to around -5/6 before when skiing in the past.

 

[rxmd]

My hat goes off to you! - (shot three is my favourite, btw)

Thanks to all of you for the warm words, pun not intended 😛

I remember reading on this forum some time ago that under extream temeratures you have to be really careful with film - wind on slowly to stop the film from snapping. I guess the other problem would be operating the camera with gloves on? I've only ever used a camera down to around -5/6 before when skiing in the past.

I must say I never had a problem with film breaking, but I tried to be careful about winding slowly. Loading the camera is difficult (mostly did that indoors), and when taking the camera in from the cold I usually kept it in a plastic bag and waited till it accommodated to room temperature, to avoid problems with condensation. Operating the camera without gloves is a pain (plastic camera bodies do have an advantage there). With gloves it actually isn't that bad; if you've got gloves that are fine enough for operating your front door keys, operating a camera isn't much of a problem (and I had been working in libraries without central heating where the temperature was about zero, so I had to get fine gloves anyway for typing). On the AE-1P the main problem with gloves on is setting aperture to automatic and back, because for that you need to press a small button on the lens. On a Zorki, setting shutter speeds would be difficult, and aperture on lenses such as the Industar-22 would be difficult to set without touching the front lens with gloves.

Philipp