Tips for Filming in the Fog

I had a very foggy drive to work today, and that got me thinking about filming in these foggy conditions. I thought today would be a perfect opportunity to give you guys some tips for filming in these foggy mornings.





Tips for Filming in Fog:


1. Fog can be worse for a camera than rain if you are unaware of the damages that fog can do to your camera. The condensation from fog can easily get up in your camera and cause damage. Probably the most important tip I can recommend for filming in foggy conditions is to use a rain cover to protect your camera from the condensation.

2. Always make sure that your lens is clean. Don't just look through on your LCD screen or through your viewfinder, physically turn your camera around and clean the lens. Why does this happen? The cold lens is subjected to warm, moist air, and the local environment around the lens creates excellent conditions for condensation. As with any dramatic change in temperature, it is always better to accustom your camera slowly to those conditions. A tip would be to have your camera in a zip lock back and keep it in there for 10-15 min. while you are outside, so that the temperature of the lens and camera can adjust to the temperature outside. Any of the condensation formed will be on the outside of the bag instead of on your camera.

3. Exposing for fog is tricky because the moisture reflects a lot of light, fooling the camera into thinking there is more light than is really there. As with any other situation, to produce the appropriate colors in the video, it is key to manually set your white balance. Here is a great blog on understanding white balance and how to manually set it: Introduction to White Balance.

4. While it’s there, fog has a wonderful ability to transform common landscapes and scenes into very romantic and dramatic video or photo. Light is key in creating this "dramatic" look. Here are some photos to get you inspired: (click on images to enlarge them)

5. If you can get to an elevation above the fog, the movement of the fog makes for an excellent time lapse video:


The Unseen Sea from Simon Christen on Vimeo.