Photographing In The Rain

As a travel/nature photographer, we are often "offloaded" to some strange places with weirder weather conditions. Recently, I was "teleported" to a deforested part of Inner Mongolia known as Horqin Desert. I prepared myself for extreme heat and sand storms but it turned out to be cooling and light rain throughout the day.

Fortunately, both of my camera bodies and almost all my lenses are weather-sealed (DWR) for outdoor shooting. How confident am I with Canon's DWR you might ask? Pretty confident. I have tested 1D Mark IV, 1Ds Mark II, 1Ds Mark III and 7D in many extreme outdoor conditions and non of them ever show sign of failure/fatigue.

Photo Credit: Canon

To keep out water and dust, the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III has weather seals at 76 locations such as around buttons, dials and switches.

It is crucial for outdoor photographers to have peace-of-mind without having to worry about our gears. We can then focus on protecting ourselves (apparently our own body requires more attention) and to stay focus in getting the shots.

Having said that, I have developed a simple guidelines in helping me to shoot effortlessly under such weather condition:

• Always use a lens hood – I will choose the lens according to the weather condition. 24-70mm is the best as the hood is much 'deeper' than the other wide-angle lenses. The hood will block the rain water off the front element of my lens.
• Never face your lens upwards – I have developed a way to hang my camera body with the lens facing downwards all the time.
• Wear a cap – This will stop water from dripping down your forehead. It also help keep the area between your eye and the viewfinder dry.
• Check your battery and memory card before shoot – Your camera body is at its most vulnerable when you open it up. Just make sure you have enough juice and slot in a new memory card before the shoot. Changing lens is a bad idea too.
• Don't use a battery grip – I have read several reports where battery grips break the camera's weather-sealed system. It's logical as battery grip is never part of the body. Third-party battery grips may pose increase risks.
• Don't wipe the lens filter – Unless you have a specialized magic cloth, wiping water off your filter will make things worse. In times of desperation, I will remove the front filter (stained by water droplets) and continue shooting.

You may choose to wrap your camera with protective cover. There are many specialized cover out there to cater to different camera body type and lens type combination. But it looks kinda strange and definitely not very sexy :-p

Raining is a very depressing time for both your subject and you. The mood is just horrible and the lighting is even worse. But fret not because every situation creates new opportunities and I am about to demonstrate to you shooting under the rain can be just as fun and fruitful (well just forget about the light ok?)

Firstly, look for cheerful characters within your group. Once you have spotted them, spend more time with them. Also, look at all those bright colors! They are gorgeous!

In a forest of green, the colorful rain jackets became the point of interest.

The vibrancy and translucency of the raincoats can be very interesting to photograph. Look for color formation. Didn't know iPhone 3Gs is weather-sealed too :-o

Shooting greens with water droplets are nice too. Against a darker backdrop, you can try to take some slower speed shots to include streaks of rain water.

Look around and you might spot some local kids walking around in cute little "Wellington" boots. And you get interesting reflections on the ground too. You don't get that in a sunny day, that's for sure.

So the next time you feel totally depressed by the wet weather, just look for opportunities and keep going. And yes, having a backup camera body safely zipped inside your camera bag is priceless.