Antartica travel photos

[mojojo5]

Hi all - i am a novice photographer with a Sony Alpha 100 DSLR. and am off to the Antarctic in February!!!... so could really use any advice on snow and ice landscapes, over exposure etc, is there special gear i need to stop my camera from freezing up?
What would be the best way to store all my photos while i am down there - should i buy a whole lot of memory sticks or is there something better?

[JFSanders]

This guy took a D-300 nikon down. So I would think the Sony would do as well.

[inkista]

You could consider getting a hard drive storage device, or a netbook to store photos instead of getting multiple cards. Carrying a second external hard drive as a backup isn't necessarily a bad idea, either.

In terms of exposure, it's the usual snow scene deal, where your metering will tend towards underexposure. I can tell you, you will be spoiled for choice when it comes to the scenery.

For the cold, it depends on where you're going. If you're just taking a cruise on a boat and staying in the islands on the tail (that's what we did when I went), you won't need to worry about extreme cold. We went in January at the height of the Antarctic summer, and it never got below 30°F. Regular winter gear was sufficient.

Then again, when I went, I was still shooting film.

If you do end up in extreme cold weather, the two vulnerabilities in electronics that our guides told us about are LCDs (you don't want the liquid crystals to freeze and not be liquid any more) and batteries (they tend to drastically lose capacity in very low temperatures). Generally just keeping your gear inside your coat with you will be sufficient. You may want to bring some gallon ziplocs or a camera raincover with you to weatherproof your gear, since you are talking boats, Zodiacs, and island landings.

[jdepould]

Bring plenty of desiccants, when you come in from the cold, you don't want condensation causing a short somewhere. My D700 just died from monsoon season in west Africa, and I had twice as many desiccant packs as they recommended.