Photos courtesy of Stian Hagen
Many folks who purchase the Nikon D800 treat it like their baby and aren’t aware of just how much abuse the camera was designed to take. In fact, you’d be pleasantly surprised. Photographer Alexandre Buisse was shooting a campaign in some frigid weather when he looked down at his Nikon D800 and noticed just how cold it was looking. Amazingly, the camera continued to function.
We asked Alex a couple of questions about the shoot and about the camera. Be sure to also follow Alex on Facebook.
Phoblographer: What was the premise and creative concept behind the shoot?
Alex: The brief for this shoot was from Canadian technical clothing manufacturer Arc’teryx, and was about how their garments protect climbers when the weather has made a turn for the worse. Put simply, it was: go shoot some alpine climbing in stormy conditions. I had freedom of date and location, and was lucky (in a way) that we had a series of big fronts moving in the Western Alps in the past few days. The forecast was actually for a mixed day slowly deteriorating, but we found a full on storm when we stepped out of Aiguille du Midi, and just rolled with it.
Phoblographer: How did your D800 get that frozen solid?
Alex: I shot for about 4 hours, in temperatures of about -5ºC (windchill excluded), with winds of up to 50km/h from which we were occasionally sheltered, and nearly constant precipitation. The camera was out the whole time, either in my hands or attached to my climbing harness via a Peak Design Capture v2.
Phoblographer: Did it continue to function without any flaws or issues during the shoot?
Alex: It worked flawlessly, as I expected. The main problem I faced was that the viewfinder would get instantly obscured, as would my sunglasses, so framing was extremely challenging. It was good to be able to rely on fully automatic autofocus on the wide lens, though. The front element also fogged/froze very quickly, so I had to wipe it clean every few minutes.
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