One of the difficulties with wildlife photography in cold weather is keeping your hands warm, gloves are the answer you may say but using back button focus as I do I just can’t get the feel through gloves and often find I have to remove the right hand glove to shoot, the trade off being control and feel as apposed to being warm.
Over the last couple of months I must have tried countless gloves from thick cold weather gloves, fingerless gloves and thin gloves from the like's of The North Face not really finding the ideal solution, so after some research I have narrowed it down to what I think could be the solution, specific photography gloves with fold back finger and thumb sections allowing direct contact with the camera and lens controls and importantly, warm.
Both the following gloves appear to fulfil these requirements but differ considerably on cost…
Photography Gloves by Vallarret (Danish), https://photographygloves.com
This company produce a range of gloves purchased direct from their on-line store or a limited range from Amazon UK. The two options I considered are the Markhof Pro Glove at £60 and the Ipsoot Glove at £87, additional if you purchase from the on-line store you need to add postage for European delivery. Both these glove get good reviews but thats what I would expect from gloves at this price range.
Sealskinz a British company make a number of products including gloves and a company I’m more familiar with, the glove I have chosen is the Sporting Glove, made from leather and man made material backs and available from a number of UK outlets including Amazon, at the time of research if you take advantage of Amazon Prime one month free trial you can purchase these gloves at a very competitive £36 half the cost of the Vallarret option.
Taking delivery of the XL sized gloves my first impression was the fit was a little tight for my liking although a more snug fit may well suite some people to ensure a secure grip on the camera equipment, after an initial trial I decided to exchange the gloves through Amazons PassMyParcel scheme which arrived next day to a size XXL !
In this image you can see the fold back finger and thumb sections which are held in place with magnets. This option is available on both gloves for anyone that's left handed or for operation of the image review and menue buttons.
Sealskinz claim these gloves are 100% waterproof, windproof and totally breathable but my thoughts were how warm would these lightweight gloves be ? Testing in the recent snowy artic conditions of last week I found them to be warm for the entire period although I've not had chance to use with extended camera operation
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