I photographed this Snowy Owl in the severe cold during the very last moments of the sun recently. As a long time sufferer of Raynaud's syndrome, keeping my hands warm is of paramount importance during my Snowy Owl workshops. I typically use big & warm mitts with several hand warmers to keep my fingers warm. Although I have mastered how to control my camera with the mitts on, it takes a lot of practice and I do miss the occasional shot.
The Sony RMT-P1BT Wireless Remote Commander came in useful while set-up on this Snowy Owl, waiting for it to open its eyes and look at the camera. With the Remote Commander tucked into my mitt, I was able to trigger the camera via Bluetooth without taking my hands out of the warm mitts.
While it is true that a wired controller would have worked just as well to trigger the camera, it is connected to the camera with a wire that is prone to get tangled in my extensive cold-weather gear, and since it is wired, I would have to leave it attached to the camera in the cold anytime I moved away; this means putting the frozen device back into my warm mitts and defeating my efforts to keep my fingers warm.
Bald Eagle SNOWY PORTRAIT a la Sony a9 Silent Shutter
American Bald Eagle SNOWY PORTRAIT (Hailiaeetus leucocephalus, Pygarge a tete blanche, BAEA) Kachemak Bay (near Homer), Alaska ©Christopher Dodds All Rights Reserved. Sony Alpha a9 Mirrorless camera & Sony FE100-400mm F4.5-5.6 G Master OSS Lens @ 218mm Full Frame image. ISO 5,000 f/16 @ 1/400s Manual mode.
Sony a9 Mirrorless silent mode
Here's another Eagle from my recent Eagles Galore workshop in Alaska; it's a full frame portrait from the Sony a9 mirrorless camera in silent mode at 218mm. After all these years of learning how to approach wildlife without spooking away my subjects, it is incredible to be sitting just a couple of feet from wildlife and enjoying the peace of the silent shutter without concern that the shutter noise from my next image might scare my subject away! While I have used shutter noise to spark curiosity in tolerant subject just to try to get them to move their head to a better angel in the past, shutter noise usually scares away the very best and rarest wild subjects.