Shootin’ In The Rain

As promised, an explanation of how I photographed in the rain and kept my camera, at least, dry. This was born out of desperation. For starters, spare gear (a small MiniDV camcorder, my SB-600 and a lens) were all in ziploc bags inside my lumbar pack. This kept them all waterproof. For the camera itself, I took my lightweight Gore-Tex jacket and put the camera inside. I stuck my right arm through the left sleeve, allowing me to grab the camera with my right hand. I then stuck the camera’s lens through the right sleeve, securing the watertight elastic wrist closure around the front of the lens hood. I was able to shoot by positioning the viewfinder just poking out of the neck hole in the jacket. This worked well.

When it came to actually shooting, I was careful to keep the camera tilted somewhat down; this cut down on the amount of water on the lens. I was able to zoom the lens with my left hand through the jacket; there was enough slack in the sleeve to be able to twist it. The D200, like most of Nikon’s high end cameras, have amazing UIs because almost all of the controls can be adjusted with the right thumb while shooting. While actively shooting, all of the controls I need provide either tactile feedback (where I can feel the setting by the position of the control) or display in the viewfinder. The whole jacket ensemble looked dorky but it kept things dry in an absolute deluge. Here are a couple photos I took with this getup on: (click to zoom in).