8x10 In The Snow & The C-C-Cold!

[John Layton]

Nope...its the highest of the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

[Drew Wiley]

Same spot. Our West Coast earthquakes readjust the continental plates from time to time, but not any worse than typical auto or smartphone navigation programs. Likewise, we have our own White Mountains, over 14,000 feet high. Geology has a habit of shifting things around, just like trail conversation.

[Joseph Kashi]

I once made a winter 4x5 shot in -40F using a 7" Dagor in an Acme 3 shutter. The shutter actually worked although slow. I seem to recall that Ilex shutters did not use lubricate and perhaps that's why the shutter actually worked in those conditions. The photo was of ice floes that had floated up the river from Cook Inlet and was taken from from a bridge over Alaska's Kenai River.

I recall reading a View Camera Magazine article from the early 1990s where they interviewed a New York City photographer who used a large format camera in Antarctica for a few weeks on a National Science Foundation trip and without major problems. He was told by other experienced Antarctic photographers that special shutter preparations were not strictly necessary.

That said, I suspect that shutters that do not depend upon lubricants, like the Ilex Acme shutters and perhaps older Compound shutters, would tend to do better in very cold weather but I haven't made any comparisons.

[Andrew O'Neill]

I just checked the shutter on the lens I used in the video (355 G-Claron), and one second is a hair longer. I fired it off a few times, and consistently a hair longer. I can live with that...Besides, my exposures are almost always in T mode.

[domaz]

Nope...its the highest of the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

There is also a Mount Washington near North Bend, WA if you really want to confuse things. Not as high as the one in New Hampshire but a decent amount of elevation gain all the same.

[Drew Wiley]

I once read how Eliot Porter, preparing for his Antarctic trip and subsequent book, when being told he need to winterize all his lenses and cameras, pretty much gave an abrupt gruff No,
took them along just as they were, and never had a problem. That included both his Hassie and view camera gear. For my nephew's long extreme climbing expeditions on Baffin Island, in Patagonia, in the Andes, Himalayas, and Karakorum, and traverse of the Cook Range in NZ, I simply gave him a simple little Pentax MX SLR and told him to keep a few extra batteries warm in his pocket for sake of the TTL meter. No issues.

But the highest point I've reached within the past month was Mt Washing Machine four carpeted steps up from where I'm currently sitting. Once all the hills started getting really muddy and sticky, I've been shooting around the shoreline instead. I miss living in the Sierra, where even at lower elevations there was a lot of granite and other rocks allowing hiking without the path surface sticking to your boots like thick glue. Here, where the hills are mostly Pliocene mudstone or clay-derived soils below the sandstone ridge-lines, we call it, East Bay Muck.

But of all things, on National News last nite, they showed someone's cell phone shot of a granite slide right above where I once lived, blocking entire Hwy 168 during the past storm. Probably too avalanche-prone for skiers anyway up at resort altitude. Still higher Mammoth Mtn was officially closed due to just too much fresh snow. But now the incoming storm is distinctly colder, so maybe they'll end up with drier powder snow, once they safely groom the runs.
But gosh, my ole snowshoes stashed away sure seem lonely now that I'm getting ole myself.