Originally posted by jbinpg you need to keep your head, hands and feet warm somehow.
I'm not worried about me getting cold, I have the gear to keep me warm and comfortable for extended periods of time, literally days, out in the cold.
For power I wasn't going to bother with the tiny batteries in the camera but use an old but still good large car battery connected to an inverter with AC adapters running into the cameras.
Originally posted by Adam I've heard reports of camera internals freezing up in extreme cold (i.e. -40 to -30C), due to moisture inside the mirror box turning into ice.
It sounds like my biggest concern will be with any moisture in the lenses and camera bodies freezing so I will probably pack them in a large plastic bag several days before hand with some dried out silica gel pellets. I plan on not changing lenses when out to avoid having to move cold things as that seems like is sure fire way to break things.
I will be setting the apertures manually to eliminate one more moving thing with each shot to try and save on wear and possible breakages.
As far as plastic getting brittle I am aware of that and know to avoid movement.
Originally posted by photoptimist See How to Dew-Proof Your Camera Lens ? PhotographingSpace.com for some ideas on how to deal with this.
Concerning dew and/or frost I have a hood for the 300mm and have done the handwarmer trick, the 17mm fisheye will be another story as I need to figure out how to keep it warm. I will have a 12v power source so a fan attached to the tripod there is a good idea I hadn't thought of.
It is good to hear that there are some that have used these cameras in similar temps I am asking about for extended periods so I know it can be done. I've had both out when it has been in the -5F to 0F range (-20C to -17C) for an hour or so but not much longer and apart from that eating batteries haven't had an issue.
Originally posted by photoptimist One good effect of the cold is that a colder sensor is a less-noisy sensor.
That is part of why I want to do this in the winter. The others being that I can get an unbostructed view of the sky from the frozen lake, and the ultra clear humidity free skies.
I got inspired to try and do an overnight time lapse video by
Sluggo's post and figure that with some astro processing in a really dark area seeing everything chug along would be cool. Why not make use of that extra data in each shot but since it is video the k2000 would work well enough for that and the 17mm would give a nice a wide view. For DSOs I will chase those with the 300mm and K-3 as that camera works much better for those.
Now to see about finding an AC adapter for the K2000, the k3 one is still available so I'm not worried there.
Thanks for the advise so far.