jimmuller wrote: DeltaSigma wrote:
Skiing at the top of the mountain at 11,450 feet.
Needless to say it was very cold.
Nice pics!
You took those with a Z6-II? Does it have a published temperature range? I believe the Z5-II says 32degF. That nominal limit may be determined by the battery, not necessarily the sensor. I have not yet taken it out in very cold weather. Those shots don't look like the camera performance suffered any. Your hands however...
Jim,
Yes, most Nikon cameras seem to have a lame 32-104°F (0-40°C) operating range.
I never had a problem. Mine was in a Lowpro backpack all day in min temps that were hovering around 0°F.
A commercial IC operating temperature range is 32-158°F (0-70°C)
I suspect that Nikon will use some components that are specified with wider industrial temp ranges.
The 32-104°F (0-40°C) operating range specified by Nikon will likely be due to their end of line, single temperature, testing regime.
It is easier for them to fully characterise a statistically meaningful number of camera systems across a much wider temperature range, extract standard deviation info from the data and then rely on 'tight' single point temperature testing at end-of-line final test. This Guage R&R MSA methodology is used in the semi-conductor industry (in which I was involved for 40 years)
Another thing that helps in cold temps is component self-heating.
Junction temperature is what counts, not ambient temperature.
ICs and components will heat up when powered. This is a problem at the high ambient temperature end of things though.
I did some moonlight, long exposure photography and the camera performed flawlessly.
So, I would say Nikon cameras have a lot of tolerance relative to the specified operating temp range numbers which, in my opinion, are constrained in order to allow Nikon to reduce final test time and therefore cost.
