Leaving Camera outside all night

nanook5

Hi

I want to make a time lapse of the milkyway and I want to leave the camera out all night to get around 10-20 second clip .


I have a Canon 1D mkii .As far as I know this body is weather sealed (Correct me if I am wrong ) so it should be fine out for the night .

The lens I will be using is a Canon 17-35mm f/2.8 L lens .

Will this combination survive until morning ??

Thanks

Reece

Judge

Very unlikely your battery will survive more than 2-3 hours continuous shooting in cold night-time conditions.

Officially most camera manufacturers rarely specify official operating temperatures below freezing but in practice your camera should be OK provided you are careful about condensation. Seal the camera with lens still attached in an airtight plastic bag before you bring it inside and leave it for around 24-hours to warm up.

nanook5

OK thanks for your reply , I'll have a go at it so

sebphoto

nanook5 make sure you leave it covered with plastic bag or something which prevents morning dew. Body is weather sealed but not waterproof. Also consider some sort of external power supply.
Btw. how many shots you want to take?

nanook5

I want to take around 300-400 25" Exposures .

sebphoto

nanook5 wrote: »

I want to take around 300-400 25" Exposures .

I'm not good in math, but it'll be circa 2.7 hrs in total.
You should be fine.
In what intervals you're going to shoot?

nanook5

28" interval

Lets say I get 2 shots a minute = 120 an hour

So if the battery lasted 3-4 hours I would get around 360-480 (I think )

Paulw

I tried similar before. The battery in your camera and your intervalometer will run out fairly quickly, depending on the temps.

Your camera though, will be perfectly fine.

Best of luck and I hope you get the shots you want.

zerohamster

The camera should be fine as long as it isn't raining and you let it head up to room temperature afterward somewhere very dry (condensation on the internals).

If you are using a hood or filter I found a handy little trick that you can get a bag big enough to fit the camera in with the opening at the front of the lens.
Then put the hood on over the bag so that effectively the hood is sealing the bag whilst leaving the front of the lens open.
Then cut off the excess bag that would get in front of the lens. (helps if the bag is clear of course and if leaving outside a sachet or silica gel can't hurt to keep moisture out).

You probably wouldn't need that but just in case it drizzled or rained when you weren't expecting it to.

Alltherage

In addition to letting it warm somewhere dry I'd seal it in a ziplock bag (while still outside) to help keep any moisture from condensing on or in it.

nanook5

Thanks for all the tips , I might try a plastics bag on camera and maybe a hand warmer and elastic band on the lens .

I know battery will run out fast , might try connecting it up to external power source .

My intervalometer lasts quite long actually (On the manual it says like a month)
I bought it 6 months ago and only changed batteries one :P

Thanks

Zascar

Please post the results when you are done, sounds really interesting!

nanook5

Will do , whenever there is a clear weekend , can't do on school days :mad:

nanook5

Sorry if I'm bumping , but I got a chance to do it last night and it went well .

I had 3 extension leads going from my house to the field(about 50m away).
Each extension lead was bagged and had a rock on top .

Then I had the camera covered in a big plastic bag(Leaving the lens out in the open).I wrapped the bag around the camera twice so it was well insulated .

Finally I had my intervalometer,AC adaptor(for powering Canon 1D mkii ) and one of the extension leads, double bagged .

When I got up at 6:00 this morning , there was some dew on the lens hood , but that was about it .

Everything else functioned as normal .

sebphoto

share photos

nanook5

Just uploading the time lapse now

nanook5

Here it is

It turned out to be pretty Sh*te because the moon drowned it out so much.
I had thought the moon would set a bit earlier , but when it did eventually set the clouds rolled in :rolleyes:

Next time I'll try again without the moon.

I have had pretty good results from this same location , such as :


Meteor by Reece Gavin, on Flickr


Meteor by Reece Gavin, on Flickr

Hopefully next time !