The Little Snowflake - Or Batteries In The Snow

Dang me if I can figure people out. I came to Australia to escape cold weather and bears. People visit the shop every week seeking new cameras and lenses so that they can go find cold weather and bears. And they want to do it in Manitoba.

Manitoba. I ask you. The province that keeps Saskatchewhere? and Onterrible from crashing together, eh?

Ah well, no accounting for tastes. If you want polar bears you go to Churchill and freeze. And so do the batteries in your digital camera. You are out there on the snow pursuing the polar bears, or vice versa, and the batteries get cold and quit. Or at least severely drop their output.

Not surprising - the chemical reaction inside there that lets out the stored energy in the form of electricity ( or in the case of  Newfoundland batteries, in the form of steam, oily water, and cinders...) slows down and then nothing happens.

The energy is still in there, but it ain't coming out until that battery warms up. Hence the old practice we had in the film days of keeping a couple of sets of batteries in our pockets under our parkas when we ventured out into snow. Once the camera battery pack in use slowed down, we changed over to a warm one for awhile and then on through the next one. Returned the coldies to our pockets and then it would be ready to go again in a half hour, minus whatever we took out of it on the last cycle.

Try this yourself - you get your pictures, your pocket gets uncomfortably cold very half hour or so, and the polar bears are none the wiser. Fortunately they have taken mercury out of batteries these days so that when the bear digests you, the batteries will not harm them.

You'll be doing your part for the environment - inasfar as Manitoba has an environment, eh?