Winter Over Järvafältet

2009-01-04

Updated: 2023-02-13

A thin layer of snow covers Järvafältet. The cold was brutal, but the sunset beautiful. When the temperature drops to -10C or below, a lot of easy things become surprisingly hard. Thankfully, today's batteries don't discharge as fast when cold as the batteries of ten years ago. (I remember having to carry my compact point and shoot in the inner pocket of the inner jacket to keep it operational through the day.) Since even an entry-level camera such as the Nikon D40 I use now appears immune to cold, save for a slowly updating LCD, there is only one thing left that can break: The photographer.

It was too cold for gloves, so I wore mittens. Good idea in regards to keeping warm between the shots, but it made it an absolute pain to adjust anything on the camera. Suddenly my thumb was twice the size and managing to hit every button except the intended one. So, contrary to Winter Survival 101, the mittens went off when something pretty appeared, and my warm, slightly sweaty hands went out into the cold, cold winter wind. Needless to say, after a few minutes my fingers were frozen stiff and I was using the whole hand to press the shutter button. In retrospect, I would have been better off just using a pencil or a plastic stick to do the button-mashing. At least I could've kept my hands warm.

I won't bother explaining the problems encountered when changing lenses, from ultra-wide to tele and back. It's not quite as bad as tying your shoelaces with mittens, but close.