Watch the northern lights captured in real time in 4K

Just how close do you think Aurora are, and how much AF do you think is even being used in this sort of situation?

Batteries are not integrated, as they are on an iPhone, but are swappable. Carry a few spares in your pocket and there’s no problem. With a fresh battery I doubt there’s any problem for at least a couple of hours, especially since -18 isn’t that cold. Back in the day when my SLR ran on AA Alkalines, I’ve had my camera die in the cold. Not with AA lithiums, and it’s never been an issue with my DSLR and a couple of spares.

But seriously, if you think that a $2,500 camera works in -18°C weather is some sort of noteworthy feat, you should be astonished that these cameras are sold in Russia, Canada, Scandinavia, Alaska, etc., or that photographers have been managing to take pictures in the winter for decades.

We get limited amount of information about camera failures, and only some blog posts? If cameras were non-functional at -20°, the information available about the failure would not be limited, and more than “only some blog posts” would be written. Try Googling “d600 dust sensor,” a problem which only affected a small percentage of users.

The camera powers up, tries to move the lens, fails with lens error. Voila, the whole camera is unusable. (Workaround would be to keep it on manual focus. Failure mode presence also depends on the firmware.)

Unless you have the cam on a tripod outside while you are inside of a house/tent/car in warmth waiting for the lights. Of course you can put the batteries to the cam later, though.

The low-temperature performance is not that much astonishing, though it is certainly somewhat noteworthy.

The astonishing thing is the light sensitivity of the sensor, as the Northern Lights displays tend to be quite faint.

Seems to be at least somewhat true. I wonder about the actual reliability of the equipment under such conditions, though. I see a number of problems possible.

The low amount of complaints may be because of people expecting the cameras to not work, so underreporting the malfunctions. Or they may actually be rare. More data needed. Maybe we could prod the Finns to repeat the phone test with cameras?

You have absolutely no idea how these cameras are designed or function, do you?

Yes, it’s noteworthy that a camera works in the cold. That’s why I see it noted in almost every single cold-weather photograph ever taken.

I see a number of problems possible with digital cameras, period. Maybe we don’t get many complaints because nobody expects them to work, and just under-report the malfunctions.

Then again, if someone did report problems you would also dismiss them as problems, as you have suggested that wearing a tactical vest and carrying lead-acid batteries is a viable and reasonable solution to powering consumer electronics.

The D300 isn’t made anymore, the D600 is the cheapest full frame camera Nikon makes , with a focusing system designed for a crop sensor, and the D700 has been replaced by the D800 and variants.

Plus, you’re missing the Nikon D3, D4 etc, which are the “most pro” of nikon’s lineup.

I have fairly decent idea. I however do not operate one on a routine basis, being content with the compacts and subcompacts that fit my needs.

I also admit being spoiled with the knowledge (rough but there) of mil/aerospace electronics design and the appropriate caveats as of work in extreme conditions.

It is good to know the conditions under which the devices are known to successfully operate. -18C is quite low in the middle-Europe. Not unknown but also not common.

Ask any service, and you’ll see a lot of complaints. Look at the offers of spare parts, that would be completely unnecessary if there were no problems.

There are always problems. Most of them are routine.

I DID THAT! And I did that for many years, day by day, which I wouldn’t be doing if it was uncomfortable. I am a living proof that it was viable even before the age of Li-ion power banks. The popularity of said power banks (see even some posts here on BB) for powering cellphones and other stuff on-the-go is a testament to me being right here, may years (late 90’s) ago.

If you want, I can take the photo of the battery I used to use, if I find it. (I should be able to. It is dead now, though, as SLAs have limited life.)

So what?

My point is that “prosumer” is a label used mainly by enthusiast amateurs, not by pros. The D300, D600, and D700 were all considered “prosumer” by those who use the label. Despite being old, and being “prosumer,” NPS considers them pro bodies. Does it matter that even better, non-“prosumer” bodies are also considered pro?

OK, let me know what interchangeable-lens camera racks focus on startup and becomes completely inoperable if it can’t.

I know you did that. So since we could wear a lead-acid battery, how could any “problem”—if one actually existed—with the A7S’s battery be considered a problem?

The primary criterion for membership in the organization is “your income is largely or entirely dependent on photography”. Then you must have purchased two pro bodies, and three pro lenses through an authorized dealer. If you are offered membership, you receive priority repair service-- the implication being that extensive delays in repairing a lens or body will cost you money. Plus, you can test bodies before you purchase.

Now, the eligible bodies seem to cost more than $1200 and (with the exception of the obsolete D300s) are “full frame”. The question I have is whether something like a D610 or Df is built to the level where a pro can abuse it and still rely on it to work when he presses the shutter button.

They sometimes do the F-- error. The autofocus related ones can be worked around by switching to manual mode, in worst case. The lubrication issues more affect the other moving parts, in this case the mirror. Which admittedly does not affect video cameras. (And where along the line did this happen to be interchangeable-lens exclusively, anyway?)

If you keep the battery warm by your body heat, you have to be within the cable length from the camera. Which dooms you to the cold. (And yes, there are those click-to-warm gel packs that are actually used to keep batteries warm. So the problem widely exists and has a solution.)

The photographer’s inability to withstand -18°C weather is not a problem with the camera. Not that there’s any problem with a camera like the A7S simply because batteries don’t last as long in the winter. Not that Lithium batteries have particularly short battery life in the cold.

In this case not the mirror, since the A7S doesn’t have a mirror… which is why it is the most pro of any camera in the non-rangefinder mirrorless interchangeable-lens category

You’re right. It’s a discussion about the A7S (which happens to have interchangeable lenses), so I apologize for being overly inclusive).

Not all pros work in abusive conditions, and those that do get their gear serviced (and not necessarily only when something fails) a lot more frequently than most people. Regardless of whether membership requires you to make your money from photography, the fact remains that Nikon considers “prosumer” cameras to be pro. Whether those cameras currently considered “pro” are full frame or not seems to be irrelevant, not least because the A7S is also full frame.

The camera is not the only part of importance. We have to include both camera (and its components integral and replaceable), batteries, and the operator into the mix; failure of either will lead to lack of images, therefore failure of the whole mission. Either one can be the limiting factor.

The operator is the most neglected part in systems analysis. Often with catastrophic results.

Depends on how cold. They get fairly sluggish even at moderately low temperatures (ask iphones), not only losing available capacity but also losing most of its peak current delivery capability, and once the electrolyte freezes and the ion mobility drops near zero, you’re out.

Related electrolyte composite discussion here; mentions freezing point of commercial batteries to be at -30 'C, as of 1998, should be better now.
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA351962

My fault. The fog on the field got so thick that I thought the goalposts include SLRs/DSLRs and compacts.

The film was made with an f 1.4 lens-- (Rokinon 24mm f/1.4), Not many fixed lens cameras come with a lens that fast, or that fast and that wide. I wonder what the ISO was cranked up to-- the A7S is known for being very sensitive in low light.

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It is when we’re talking about whether or not it is noteworthy that a camera actually works at -18.

Yes, all prior pictures made in the cold must have been made with purely mechanical cameras. Or maybe not, given the huge lubrication problems in mechanical systems that existed prior to the A7S.

While the state of (D)SLR and other camera technology can inform our understanding of the technology in the A7S, this doesn’t mean that the A7S has all the characteristics of those other cameras.

I wish I could find the Japanese video of a Pentax camera being used in a freezer. Before the test commenced, the tech put in a special industrial SD Card. Here, a external HDMI recorder was used–perhaps one kept in a insulated container. Assuming that an SDCard is even capable of recording 4K video. would it succumb to the cold?

edit:

found it

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Took me a while but found something mentioning temperature effects on flash cells.
https://books.google.com/books?id=44J9N2rteCAC&pg=PA10&dq="flash+memory"+low+temperature&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vlTEVOmcM4j1UKuzgoAL&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q="flash%20memory"%20low%20temperature&f=false
There are some effects of temperature at write speed (high temperature slows it down) and erase quality (low temperature makes it work less well).

Overall, the SD cards should function well at low temperatures. There are anecdotal reports of failures over the Net, which I consider unlikely to be the fault of the silicon; may be some supportive system, a bad contact, or some packaging-related issue (most of low-temperature limits are due to packaging).

I’d love to know more. Anybody who sees deeper into VLSI chip physics?

Not a focus issue, but if the power zoom motor breaks on one of Sony’s NEX camera’s power-zoom lenses (the new tiny ones), even if the manual zoom is still working (or hell, even if neither are working, but the focus motor still works at the currrent fixed zoom level), they become completely unusable. I know this from sad experience when I dropped my 5T on vacation last year.

This seems to have turned into a thread about cameras, but let me just say…

I love northern lights. I’ve seen them in real life several times. Watching Lapland northern lights on a quiet cliff… it’s magical. Now I really got that huge urge to go north again. I’m gonna move to Lapland at this rate, I swear.

Here’s a video of northern lights in Lapland (not mine). Not that they’re much different, but they’re beautiful enough to watch over and over again:

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That’s one thing i’d wish to see before I die. Maybe later this year, maybe next? Will see… Would be nice to retire to the North, watch the fox fires burning on the sky, tend to the instruments listening to their RF songs…

(On a side note, some Finns managed to rig up two RTL-SDR dongles with the same clock crystal, for ionispheric diagnostics and passive radar by using radio transmitter reflections. One antenna directly to the transmitter, one to the sky for the reflected wave, and showing the differences in time delay and Doppler shift. The thing was able to detect airplanes and meteorite traces! There are youtube videos. Article here: http://kaira.sgo.fi/2013/09/passive-radar-with-16-dual-coherent.html , contains video of the signals.)
(Related thought: use the GPS sat signal, exploiting both the frequencies they broadcast on, plus possibly the additional Galileo and GLONASS frequencies/signals , for ionospheric tomography. Could be potentially used for mapping electron density in the volume.)

Random thought… The time to see the auroras is limited to night time, despite them existing in daytime too. That limits the available time to watch and spoils the opportunities when one gets up there in summer. What about eyeglasses with notch bandpass filters at the 558nm of ionized oxygen, the most common green line? That should greatly attenuate the sky background and increase contrast to something useful…

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I’ve been thinking about moving to Lapland for a while, like maybe a year, if my life at some point allows it. There are lots of environmental care jobs there, plus tourism-related jobs, so I’d probably even find a job. My partner would certainly be up for it, he’s been in love with Lapland longer than I have. Ahh, the nature, the lack of people, the reindeer (to look and to eat!)…

That’s interesting, thanks for the link!

Just go north enough in the winter and the sun never even rises for a number of days! In the most north point of Finland, the sun never rises for 51 days. Imagine that. Luckily, that’s balanced out by a month of midnight sun in the summer.

Finland has this cool tool for tracking the possibility of northern lights: http://aurora.fmi.fi/public_service/ (click English in the top-right corner, then “Magnetíc disturbance levels”)

Like, if you were in Kilpisjärvi last night, you almost certainly could’ve seen auroras. I don’t know if that kind of measurement is done for public use in other countries. We’ve used it when we were in Lapland.

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That music. This video was much more enjoyable on mute.

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