Taoguy
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 p.1 #8 · 24 hours, continuously, at <32 degrees | |
Russ,
I would be concerned with moisture only if you are taking your gear into 30 to 40 degree warmer weather. When I have winter camped in my tent, temps were the same inside as outside, there was no additional heat in the tent other than sleeping bags. So my gear was fine. If you have been in cold weather before you'll do fine.
Should you encounter weather conditions where there is moisture in form or another you really have to protect you 5DMKII, as it has no weather sealing or very little if I recall. As long as the temps remain 30 F or lower you should be alright.
I have never exposed my 5DMKII to weather conditions like what you are going into. Besides weather issues I think your main concern will be battery life. Will you have access to power? If not how long will you be out? Make a decision based on your battery life while on your first trip. In the early days of digital batteries were very poor, so I made sure the LCD screen was off if possible. Even then in cold weather batteries would only last a few hrs.
As far as damaging your equipment, condensation will occur from in and out of warm/cold temps. I did place my equipment in a dry bag overnight, left open slightly, (probably made no difference) and placed so it was protected from snow fall entering the bag. I only brush or air blow my lens, not your breath, seen that a few times as well. It is easy to forget and just blow off the snow with your breath, not good.
On my last trip into the Arctic with a group there were several battery failures, mainly on prosumer type cameras and two people had their camera freeze up, where nothing worked. The two that froze were brand new cameras, we could not get them going even after staying inside for a couple days. I think human error was the main culprit in this case. We were in temps -25 F outside and +45F inside, they would shoot outside for 30 minutes and go inside to warm up, put their equipment in a bag, taking it inside. My experience is it takes several hours for the camera body to come up to room temp so when they took the camera back outside after 30 minutes it froze up. Some froze in less than a minute, it was a 70 degree swing, moisture freezes. If your temps don't have that big change condensation is not a problem other than when it falls from the sky.
I have never had this happen ( Lucky ). I have seen people spend a ton of $ on a trip only to have their camera fail for various reasons. Puts a damper on the rest of trip. The Pro series bodies, either Canon/Nikon and others are built much better today for these conditions. I've wondered about static electricity in cold weather with digital, never had any issues to date.
If you are going just for the photography have a back up plan IMO. Planning is half the trip, right? As far as ruining your equipment, it can happen, just try to take those precautions to protect it as best you can. Keep your spare batteries in your pockets close to your body, when I shot w/MKIIN battery might make 3 or 4 hrs, I don't know about the new 1 Series Canon's today but the Nikon D3s batteries have an amazing cold weather life cycle. I place my used CF cards in a small case I have and then in a sealed baggy type plastic bag.
If you don't have a backup body, I'd get one/rent one or I'd expect Murphy's Law to apply for sure.
The nice thing about extreme cold weather photography is that most people don't like the cold so you'll have that world pretty much to yourself. 
Good shooting.
Gerard
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