Rain, Water and Digital Cameras

As the guidebook says, digital cameras, “…are not waterproof, and may malfunction if immersed in water or exposed to high levels of humidity.”

Don’t be deceived. If you immerse your digital camera in water, there is no ‘may’ about it, it will malfunction! (Don’t ask me how I know.)

But digital camera owners in the Pacific Northwest face the prospect of never being able to use their cameras outside if they don’t come to terms with humidity in the form of precipitation.



It’s been raining in the Columbia River Gorge for about two straight weeks now and I’ve been thwarted by ‘humidity’ in two ways in my efforts to get pictures at Oneonta Gorge. The first way is by high water that confines me to the mouth of the gorge. The second way I’ve been thwarted is by raindrops on the lens which I don’t notice until I unload my images to the computer for review.


I thought the solution to my first challenge would be hip-waders, but the helpful outdoorsmen at work suggested neoprene bib overalls with built in boots. In fact, Bob had a pair he was willing to let me borrow.

Bob hunts with arrows and also fishes, so it shouldn’t be surprising that he invested in a good pair with an excellent camouflage design.

I then set about devising a means by which to protect the camera from rain.

1. Get a plastic sack.

2. Get a rubber band.

3. Poke a hole in the sack.

4. First place the rubber band at the base of the camera’s lens, then enlarge/stretch the hole in the sack over the tip of the lens.

5. Fasten the sack to the lens with the rubber band (be careful not to interfere with the focus ring).

6. Fold the sack back over the rubber band, creating a plastic-sack-housing for the camera and lens.

7. The sack will help protect the camera from rain. Finally, put a hood on the front of the lens to minimize the number of raindrops that will land on the glass.

Feeling a little bit like Jacque Cousteau, I step into the flowing water and search for a shallow route upstream. I manage to get to the large boulders in front of the logjam, but to get beyond the boulders will require some graceful jumping on slippery rocks over deep fast running water. Though my brain - clinging to idealized memories of my body’s athletic capabilities - suggests that it would be easy, my body reminds me that it hasn’t forgiven me for the snowshoe adventure yet, and my wallet reminds me that a single misstep will likely result in financial hardship, either in camera replacement or medical costs, provided I survive.

Though I know there is a waterfall at the end of this gorge, I settle for this view beyond the logjam.

Even though I have taken steps to protect the camera from water (keeping it in the camera bag, wiping the lens regularly), picture review time on the computer shows me that there continues to be a high correlation between the degree to which I like an image and the number of raindrops which appear on the lens – that is, the more I like an image, the more raindrops it will have.

As a last resort, since I have taken multiple exposures, I am able to use imagery from similar pictures to save the shot I prefer by cutting and pasting to layers within Photoshop.

Detail: Before Photoshop / After Photoshop

Final repaired image of logjam

Equipment Evaluation:

Neoprene bib with built in boots

Pros: These things work. I stayed dry and warm even when I sat on a rock in the middle of the stream to fiddle with the tripod. Also, I'm told that if you should fall into the water, they float (as opposed to hip-waders which act as water anchors).

Cons: You have to have the skills and agility of Harry Houdini to get in and out of them. This has scary implications if you should fall into the water. I felt clumsy with the big boots. They are so comfortable in the water that one tends to become reckless. I think if you ever get a hole in them, they would become instantly useless.

Plastic sack rain shield

Pros: Works briefly to keep rain off camera body

Cons: In practice, after lengthy exposure to rain, the inside of the sack becomes as wet as the outside of the sack. An invaluable tool to have is an old T-shirt to periodically wipe the camera and the inside of the sack. Keep the camera in a camera bag until you're ready to shoot.

Wet/dry bag (Used in rafts and canoes)

Pros: As long as the camera is in the bag and the bag is closed, you don't have to worry about immersing your gear.

Cons: These bags don't have shoulder straps so you have to carry them by hand. In practice, this means that you almost always have the bag open, and when you are using your camera and trying to set up the tripod, the wet/dry bag has a tendency to migrate down river with all of your extra batteries.

Pondering 'Depth of Field'

I was monkey-ing around with depth of field the other night.


FIGURE 1. In this image, the aperture value = 29, and the shutter speed , = 30 seconds under these dim lighting conditions.



FIGURE 2. Here, the aperture value = 4.5, and the shutter speed = 1.3 seconds.


There seems to be three main factors that affect the depth of field: The focal length of the lens, the aperture, and the distance of the subject in relation to the background and the lens.

Here I tried to limit the variables to just the aperture. For these images the global values are: An 18-55mm zoom lens (in this case the focal length was set at 35mm). I also had the camera set to aperture priority.

The sock monkey was sitting about 3 feet from the front of the lens, and approximately 4 feet beyond the monkey sits the monitor. The depth of field in Fig. 2 is quite narrow. The material in the chair immediately behind the monkey is already starting to blur (compare to Fig. 1)

The monitor sets up a backlighting situation which I tried to balance with my hallway light. I used my spot meter to expose for the monkey’s brown skin tone. It seems that metering with the camera’s spot meter is somewhat hit or miss.


To really increase the amount of fuzziness in the background, I had to adjust the Zoom lens so that its focal length was at the maximum 55mm. In this image, the aperture value is 5.6, the widest value possible for this lens at 55mm. I haven’t really changed my distance from the monkey, though the longer focal length has the effect of bringing one closer to one’s subject matter. Somehow, it seems that the magnification of the subject has a correlation to the compression of the depth of field, but I still can’t visualize the physics.

Even though I'm becoming aware of the variables involved with setting up depth of field shots, I still can't control it. In this picture of a shell, the sand grains show that my point of focus was a little bit too much towards the front of the shell. This is a case where the subject isn't really engaging in a lot of activity, and yet I still wasn't able to get the whole shell in focus (Sadly this is the best of three attempts). In the olden days, lenses used to have distance/aperature markings on the focus ring that worked to show what the depth of field was for a given distance and aperature setting. These markings don't appear on the Canon EFS 18-35mm kit lens that comes with the Rebel.

While the instruction manual details a depth of field preview button, the only thing that appears to happen to me when I use it is that in some cases, the image in the view finder becomes darker, which, instead of helping me determine the range of acceptable focus, just makes it harder to see. I know there must be some kind of a correlation there, but so far, it hasn't been immediately obvious.