Jazz Hands At the Camera Shop

It is going to be winter here in Australia in a few months and all of the citizens who have forgotten what it is like to be cold and miserable are going to be reminded. The most poignant ones will be the photographers who will go out on landscape shooting expeditions, get up pre-dawn to freezing conditions on top of the local mountain range, and then try to actually poke away at the controls of their digital cameras.

The cruel amongst us will laugh as their frozen little fingers try to hit the tiny buttons and fail, and their looks of anguish will be treasured. Or they could buy a pair of warm gloves just to spite us...

The trouble with the average warm pair of gloves is that they make the hands inside them feel good, but are only a little less clumsy as they hold the camera. They can be bulky, slippery, and awkward. Enter the Aquatech company with their pair of Sensory Gloves.

They are as warm and toasty as you could want - and I assure you I tried them on in the studio and they were delightful - but they are also safe for camera use. The inside of the palms and fingers are lined with non-slip dots.

In addition, the ends of the forefinger and thumb are fitted with flaps and small holes to allow you to poke your finger through them and activate touch screens or delicate controls. Once done, you can slip the end of the fingers back into the warm.

Luxury? Try half way up Bluff Knoll in a blizzard or out on an Antarctic expedition and see how little luxury costs...

The Falls Creek Lunch Box - Or How To Go In The Snow

The daughter has just been to visit Falls Creek in Victoria and was lucky enough to hit the best snowfall day of the year - 30cm of powder. The pictures she brought back of the holiday taken with my old Fujifilm X-10 set to automatic are wonderful - she put the SD card into the slot on the television last night to give us a slide show and I am torn between pride and jealousy - they are that good.

Note: The dear old X-10 was superseded by the X-20 and latterly has been replaced by the X-30. This Fujifilm compact zoom line just gets better and better. Travellers take note...

But back to the snow. She missed out on a few of the activities they did because she was afraid to take the camera out into the falling snow - I have since told her she was silly as the devices do pretty well, but she was careful with it. In retrospect I think I should have grabbed one of the small Pelican cases and let her dump the thing into that - then she could have ventured out into the cold dauntless.

This is the one I'd have picked - the Pelican 1050. It's only $ 35 and has the famous water-tight edge seal that Pelican is famous for. Plus a pressure relief valve that means it does not get stuck closed if you go up and down the mountains.

The interior is a padded solid rubber well - not a foam block. This means that you don't have foam crumbles flailing around and getting into the camera. There is plenty of room in there for the Fujifilm X-30  - as a matter of fact it is big enough to take the Fujifilm X-100T  or either the Fujiflm X-E2 with a 27mm lens or the new Fujifilm X-T10 with a similar optic. Now THAT'S going to be good tourist photos!

Note the carabinier strap and side slots for other strapping.

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?