How does altitude affect camera and lenses?

Question

This summer I'll be attempting to get to the top of Kilimanjaro. I'm bringing my Olympus E-30 and a couple of lenses. The instructions I've received mentions that you should check the height range with the manufacturers of any digital equipment you're bringing.

Kilimanjaro is 5895 meters tall (19341 ft).

How, if at all, will the height affect my digital camera?

Answer 1

Nothing will be wrong with your digital camera.

However, do not use a Microdrive or any device which includes ones. Those have a 10,000 ft maximum altitude. Microdrives as Compact Flash are rare these days but they are commonly (but not always) used in video cameras, iPods and media-players.

Once on a press trip with 11 other photographers we reached an altitude of 12,000 feet and every single iPod in the group failed. A number of people were expecting to use those devices to off-load their data. I was surprised to find out I was the only one who know about the altitude problem.

NOTE: It is actually not the altitude that matters but the air-pressure that is necessary to lift the HDD head off the platter. Still, manufacturers quote altitude. Where it matters is on a plane. Commercial aircraft are pressurized around 85kpa (as measured by me) which corresponds to a much lower altitude (roughly around 6000 ft) than their corresponding cruising altitude, so you can use a Microdrive on most such aircrafts.

Answer 2

I doubt that it will. I use a digital camera at 14,000+ feet fairly routinely (and only use it below 6000 feet or so when I travel). Aircraft have used cameras with little or no modification for quite a while, often at considerably higher altitudes than you're considering. Many are different because they're specialized, (e.g., shooting only in infrared or other narrow range of color), but quite a few use pretty standard parts too (e.g., the 105 Micro Nikkor lens has been used for a fair amount of aerial photography).

The only thing I can think of right off isn't the camera or the altitude themselves, but that at altitude the temperature is generally a lot lower, which can reduce the power you get from your batteries. If it's very cold, you're often better off with at least two batteries, so you can carry one in a pocket (or whatever) where it'll stay warm, and you can swap the two as needed.

Edit: one other thing I should mention: at higher altitudes, you also get quite a bit more UV light, so a good UV filter can be extremely useful, even if you don't normally use one at lower altitude.

Answer 3

The camera will be fine.

It's worth noting that some camera components have trouble at extreme altitudes.

In my case, the place I work flew a Canon 30D on a high-altitude balloon, which makes it up to ~90,000-100,000 feet.
Unfortunately, some idiot forgot to turn the flash off, and the flash self destructed due to lack of cooling (there is little air to dissipate heat through convection at that altitude).
However the camera itself was fine. The flash required a trip to Canon for replacement.

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Basically, you camera will even work fine in a vacuum, if you turn the flash off.

_{It's worth noting that it's probably not a good idea to do sustained burst shooting in a vacuum, since again, there is no air to disipate heat, and it all has to radiate away. The above balloon project had the camera shooting every minute or two.}