Wind!

[Stephen Vaughan]

I am suffering from wind! NO, not that kind of wind - gale-force wind!

Any advice on how to cope? My darkcloth (and me) very nearly flew away.

Thanks and good wishes.........

[Scott Walton]

Get a Brightscreen or Beattie intenscreen and do away with the dark cloth... just a thought that works for me.

[abiggs]

Use an umprella sideways to block the wind and time of exposure.

[Richard Boulware]

High winds are a problem here in Colorado. Very sturdy tripods are a necessity. I am reminded what Ansel Adams told me over dinner in Honolulu, in 1956....on the subject of tripods. He said the ideal tripod..."is a cubic yard of concrete with a 1/4" X #20 bolt sticking out of the top". With regard to setting up an umbrella to shield the winds, I am reminded that you might want to have an assistant hold on to it.... as he yells,..."Toto..this must be Kansas"! (:-)

[Jeff Scott]

Andy,

How does an umbrella block time of exposure?

[abiggs]

Ha ha ha. It blocks the wind! Won't help you with length of exposure. Maybe a larger aperture will! he he he.

Seriously, my umbrella is a necessity here in the San Francisco bay area. Wind wind wind. My umbrella blocks the wind at the time of exposure, so my bellows doesn't get a chance to act like a sail. And to keep my tripod on the ground, I have been using a Gitzo 1228 with a center column. Not the greatest, but i bought it for my 35mm gear a while back. Saving for a Ries. Anyway, I hang my backpack or Domke satchel on the hook on the column to keep it anchored.

Hope this helps.

[Jan erala]

At the moment of writing this, the wind outside in the night is yawling with some forty knots and the snow is flying horizontal. The forecast predicts that same weather continues. Despite this, I'm not gonna leave my 8x10 at home tomorrow. I have a van car with a slide door, and I'm making a lot of my photography from inside this car. When I want to take a picture, I mark the place exactly, and try to get the car in the right position so I can have the camera used from inside. May sound funny, but in many, many cases this works surprisingly well. More than half of all pictures on my pages in www.itameri.net/janeerala are taken from inside a car. And I'm sure you can't tell which one these are. And of course, this works well in rainy or very cold weather too. But you have to enjoy merely urban scenes, though I've been doing this in the tundra and the windy shores around the Northern Ice Sea. Jan

[Sal Santamaura]

Jan, do you have some sort of stabilizing struts on your van that can be extended into contact with the ground (like those found on lifting cranes) to keep it from rocking in the wind?

[Jan erala]

Sometimes in heavy weather, I have to stabilize the car with knocking a piece of timber under the lee side. Mostly I'm having one of the tripod legs outside the car, this gives more spatial room for composition.

[Doremus Scudder]

I also try to dispense with the dark cloth in high winds. Composing carefully before you set up will help, then you don't have to see everything on the gg, just enough to focus accurately and make sure you have the edges in the right place. a loupe with a black barrel blocks a lot of light too, obviating the need for the focusing cloth to some extent. To hold my (lightweight) tripod down in the field I carry one of these nylon backpackers buckets. It's basically a waterproof 2-gallon nylon bag with handles. This weighs only an ounce, but I can fill it with rocks, sand, snow or whatever and hang it on the tripod for extra stability. My film holder bag hangs on the tripod as a matter of course. I haven't tried the umbrella bit, but I do use my body and jacket spread wide to shield the camera at time of exposure. It works pretty well, especially if you can set up low. The other side of wind is the subject movement it causes. I do a lot of waiting for that 1/4 second of still. Sometimes, a multiple exposure of faster speeds during the rare still periods works, i.e. three or four 2-second exposures to get the 6-8 seconds you need, taken over a longer period but when the wind dies down momentarily. Adjusting plane of focus carefully helps keep the shutter speeds up. Sometimes you just have to open up/change to a wider lens/back off to get a usable shutter speed. Sometimes you just have to walk away. Regards, ;^D)