My Session Was Ruined with Soft Shots! Here's Why...
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 พ.ค. 2024
- I share why many of my photos were soft when I went out recently with the Canon R7 & 200-800. I hope you found this video helpful, and I would love to hear from you in the comments if you have experienced heat haze. Cheers, Duade
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Chapters
00:00 Canon RF200-800 f/9
01:58 Soft Shots
03:59 Heat Haze
07:30 Flight Shots
03:27 Crested Tern Colony
09:00 Purple Swamphen
09:50 Final Thoughts
14:51 Conclusion
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![[Vowel]물고기는 물에서 살아야 해🐟🤣Fish have to live in the water #funny](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3G9MH063Cx4/mqdefault.jpg)
Recently watched a UK channel talking about this very thing ('Wildlife Photographer UK' Ashley Barnard). He took the lens hood off and the heat haze was gone from his images. The distortion was from the different temperature in the hood to the outside cold. Thought I'd just share this with you Duade.
this is a very interesting insight
Experienced exact same issue with the Sony 200-600, shooting without the lens hood sorted my problems.
@@1964pmitchell i Will definitely try with my R7 + SIGMA 150-600
Another wonderful information! Thanks!
Wow, never heard of this. Must try it out. Thanks.
I'm really glad you didn't scrap the video and turned it into a teaching moment! Thanks Duade! Can't wait for the full review!
Steve Perry has an excellent video on haze caused by the lens hood as well. If you don’t let your gear acclimate to the outside temp for about 10-15 minutes when there are big swings you can actually have a temp difference right in front of the glass. Worth checking out and it’s a great explanation
For those of us in cold climates (like northern Canada), it's especially good on how warm air gets trapped in the lens hood. The link for Steve's video is th-cam.com/video/B42nXgYUwyo/w-d-xo.htmlsi=AKY-pSLQcQ8Lj3Qe
Thanks for sharing, sounds like I need to give that a try, Cheers, Duade
Steve’s video is very insightful. I learned to keep the car heater off, open the passenger window and shutoff the vehicle as soon as I arrive at a shoot, especially if shooting from the vehicle. Anytime you have a temperature differential you are risking heat haze, especially with long telephotos.
These honest videos are absolutely great... Someone like me who is on a budget, these videos are very important so I can really make a decision on where my money goes without just looking at specs on paper
Heat haze affects any camera's images, as shown in the video (Jan's R5 images were soft too, due to heat haze). So the specs really didn't come into it.
If you mean poor noise/IQ when underexposing in low light with an APS-C camera, that will happen on all APS-C cameras. Even the cheapest FF Canon RP is vastly superior in this regard.
@@cooloox which is good to know when someone buys this lens and thinks they may have wasted their money when they havent... As I said these videos are very important for people like me who are on a budget and don't want to rely on specs on paper, I want real world information
It is my pleasure, just sharing my experience and learning at the same time. Cheers, Duade
Hello Duade,
I have been living in the Strait of Gibraltar, Spain for two years. I moved here because I can observe one of the largest bird migrations in the world (the pre-breeding one from Africa to Europe and the post-breeding one from Europe to Africa). To give you an idea...around 400,000 birds of different species come and go. I have the opportunity to photograph many of them and I can confirm that what you say in this video is true. Heat haze affects the sharpness of photos. In my case, not only at ground level, due to thermal currents (which are the birds' elevators to gain height) many photos come out with Heat haze but at heights of 100 meters. It is clear that the proximity of the sea and the thermals cause Heat haze.
Thanks for your videos!!
Greetings from Spain.
David!
OMG! Fantastic insight! I can think of a dozen or so times I was unable to get sharp images without any thought of heat haze (or any visible shimmer) but from what you've shared with us I can now see that's what it was! I am now signing up for membership :)
As well as wildlife I do quite a lot of aviation photography and heat haze is a real problem when trying to shoot aircraft landing or taking off. A case in point is when I was on holiday in Australia last September, I visited the observation area for Perth Airport and the heat haze was so bad O could only shoot aircraft as they took off and where ate least 50 metres up. I was using an R6 with the RF 100-500mm
Atmospheric haze is a common phenomenon in most places. The extra reach of super telephoto lenses just exacerbates the effect.
Take the Hood off! @ 06:38 this is one scenario that can be affected by having a hood on. I realize that ‘joanhuggett’ has already posted a comment on this, but I am just reinforcing it, if you will. I have experienced this, and didnt fully understand it until I read about it from ‘Steve Perry,’ a noted and very talented Wildlife Photographer.
I continue to be amazed by your Photography skills, and your knowledge of your subjects! Cheers! 👍
The clue is the mist on the water, caused by warm damp air being condensed by cold air above. Another great video, thanks
Thank you, thank you, thank you Duade! I am so glad that you have provided this video to show us that we / I am not the only one that can go out and not seem to get any sharp or otherwise great bird photos. I have been struggling at times with my R7 and R5 with the highly praised RF 100-500L lens and had similar results no matter how many various camera settings that I have tried based on many different "how to" videos on TH-cam. I will definitely not give up now knowing that heat haze can get us in surprising ways, and also great feedback from the comments supplied by your viewers about taking off the lens hood if there are difficulties in getting sharp photos. I have always used my lens hood, not only for sunny lens flare concerns, but also for general protection against lens damage due to knocks, minor drops, etc. Thanks again for your insightful and comforting videos.
Interesting! Thanks for the info Duade
Lots of heat haze at the Grand Canyon. In fact, every time I went I experienced it. UNTIL ... I went in the winter - then, it was beautiful !!! Also happens a lot in Florida.
I was aware of heat haze, but not on the level you explained and showed.
My 180-600Z usually sharp tack, was really soft on some low-light shots, couldn't give it a reason.
I don't use the hood but stuck a 120€ protection filter in front. Removed it, no more haze, and sharp shot even without the hood.
You have to understand... as you did and demonstrated ... the real reason for what's happening, instead of judging the situation "by simple defaults" ...
Too many opportunities to take it wrong !!! Heat Haze, Damaged lens, Hot Hood, or a bad copy of the filter ....
A great thanks ( as per usual ) to you for sharing your Joy.... both in success and in mystery mistakes !!!!
An experience similar to the guy from Holland, a very cold UK winter's day and stopped the car to get out and take a few shots of Mandarin ducks on an iced-over lake, using the roof and beanbag for support. All were rubbish by even my modest standards which I blamed on the RF600 f11(a handy scapegoat for my many limitations!) until I learned from Simon d'Entremont that - as you rightly say - I was shooting through a heat haze caused by the warm car and, no doubt, a second one rising from the water. Great vid as always!
heat haze Duade is the story of my life, i go to the desert and larks, buntings and babblers are all over me, but all shots and way less than what i get in my garden shots, so i learnt to hold my camera until one lark or something decide to come close about 5 meters or less then i take shots. yes if you stay quite birds will come to you even if you don't use camouflage. and yes car shots during summer time all bad specially if the bird far.
thank sa million for answering all my questions about the problem. i live in Jeddah on the Red sea.
It's so good having this info that you and Jan provide. Helps so much. Thanks.
Excellent reminder, thanks Duade! Fabulous video!
Thanks for highlighting an important problem, especially with a long lens on a crop sensor. In northern Canada, morning temperatures of -20C are not unusual for most of the winter. As a result, I find that a lens hood creates a lot of haze as I move from inside the car, presumably because the hood traps warm air in front of the lens, where it can take a long time to equilibrate. Steve Perry has done some nice comparisons with and without a lens hood to illustrate the phenomenon. In addition, trying to lean on the car hood to stabilize the camera can create a lot of haze when the engine is warm. These may be more problematic in cold climates, but they're very real.
I live in Spain and this happens to me all the time, specially when photographing over water surfaces. The APSC format makes you try longer distances, which compounds the problem. You just have to be aware of it and try to be closer and avoid certain situations or times of day. Very tricky!
Thanks for sharing your experience, Cheers, Duade
Your videos always make my day better thanks so much for all the work you put in to them 🤙
And I'm pretty new so I haven't experienced heat haze 😁
You went to the trouble of taking a lot more shots with the 200-800 on the R7 because a lot of your viewers have that camera. That, in itself, is remarkable and an example of what makes your channel so wonderful. You provide some very practical advice, as well as inspiration - and some really nice images to look at.
I live in Texas. We get some ridiculous heat haze. But what you're describing, with the air layers, we refer to as a "temperature inversion". We usually see it in the cooler months, and usually in the mornings. And, yes, there are weird issues with light being reflected. So much so that the top layer of air can act as a reflector, and somewhere in between there is a lensing effect. We were driving very early one morning and I looked out over a bay that I have known since childhood. I could see fishing boats heading out, on the back side of a spoil island, and they seemed oddly magnified in size. Then I realized... I have looked out at that scene my whole life. That island sticks up too far to see the water on the other side. I couldn't possibly be seeing what I was seeing. Then I realized that the boats looked much too large, considering the distance to them. I could make out the people in them clearly, as if I was looking at a magnified image.
The light from off of the water was striking the bottom of the inversion layer and being reflected back down to our eyes. If you've ever shined a light onto water at night, you know that the water surface reflects a lot of that light, and only a portion goes into the water. What most people don't know is that the bottom side of the water does the same thing. If you use an underwater light for fishing, a lot of its light will be reflected back down by the surface layer.
For people who missed it, you had a shot of a swan where you said the AF "grabbed the eye". So your focus distance was perfect, but the light reaching your lens was scattered, and the shot was "soft". But not the kind of soft we usually think of, because that usually has to do with focus, depth of field, etc. What you had was light from the same spot on the subject striking your lens at different locations. That's from light being reflected and refracted within that inversion layer.
Not to sound like a broken record, but the ISO issues you had in that early morning time is exactly what I have tried to warn people about with the 200-800. Humans love early mornings and late evenings, and we love to take photos during those Golden Half Hours. I still think that a LOT of enthusiastic amateurs are going to be disappointed when they see the images they are getting in those hours. Or maybe the images will be good enough for them. If they're shooting mostly stationary subjects and able to slow the shutter sufficiently. But you (and Jan) specialize in birds, and for birds that lens is a bit of a hard sell for me, for the reason I just stated.
The contrast between those early photos and the sharp swamphen is insane - great video!
Great problem solving! Thank you
Questions to answer for 200-800 review. 1) How to (if its possibile) setup focus lock at specific distance with lens function button. 2) compare autofocus (with eye tracking) speed / quality vs 100-500 (with 1.4 TC) for BIF 3) image quality vs the same as previous in equal conditions.
Thanks for video, I wait everytime new video from you :)
I hadn't thought of heat haze being an issue like that before. Interesting and worth keeping in mind.
I have experienced this on cold mornings in florida. Did not realize this was the reason. Thanks for pointing this out.
Great video!! I've never had this issue, but I'll store this away in my memory for when it happens. Thanks for sharing your experience with us!
Very interesting! I would not have thought of this! Thanks for sharing. My lens arrives next week! Can't wait to test it out! Jodes.
Such a great video! Thanks a bunch for expanding on this. Im looking at going to that same combo, R7 +200-800 and i hear/read so much bad about it, but this makes complete sense and makes me feel better about considering that combo
No limit of learning new things for photography. Thank you very very very much...
It's not 'heat haze', although I appreciate that this is the name that's been attached to it, and it's stuck, which is a shame because it's a misleading term.
It's actually atmospheric differential refraction causing light rays to bend unpredictably and inconsistently in different directions, producing a shimmering effect. There is no 'haze' at all, just scattered light. It's caused not by heat as such, but by layers of differing temperature, each having a different refractive index, be they hot, warm, or cold, so not quite the same thing. The important issue is that the air temperature varies rapidly in a short distance, causing a lensing effect, bending the light. You are correct that in your case it's likely to have been caused by cold air lying on warm water, and ripples in this air produces the scattering. In your case it will have been exacerbated by the use of your ground pod, meaning that throughout the distance from the subject to the lens, the light was passing close to the surface, in the zone most likely to be affected, so it was wobbling all over the shop, but the images of flying birds, with light paths well away from the surface were OK.
When I was training to be a surveyor, in the days before electronic measuring, using optical equipment, we were warned against this effect, not doing important stuff in the heat of a sunny day, for instance. Cloudy days are better. The other thing we were warned about was what were termed 'ground-grazing rays'. The air most affected is that closest to the ground, so we were told not to take shots that were too long, but also to avoid lines of sight that came within 2 feet (0.6m) of any intervening ground, moving the target to one side if possible, to get more clearance. The same applies in photography. The trouble is that in our case, most birds are shorter than two feet, but that knowledge can go some way towards helping avoid the shimmer. A couple of years ago in June, with my R5 plus 100-500 I was frustrated when I was sitting close to the ground with my camera and a rare red-necked stint, only feet away and in great light was as soft as hell. This was caused by a low lump in the ground on the edge of the salt marsh between where I was sitting and the bird. Fortunately a sudden thunder shower arrived to cool the ground and when it passed the shots were pin sharp. I was soaked, but I got the shots.
I've just heard that my 200-800, ordered on the first day of the announcement on 2 November, is arriving tomorrow, so I'll be looking forward to trying to avoid the 'heat haze' for myself. I think that in northern England in winter, I shouldn't have too much trouble. :)
Thank you for this video. I live in the desert, in the Southwest US, and I’ve experienced this a few times with the RF 100-500. I was stumped as to what was going on until now.
Oh god, so good to know this, very many of us think that the gear is the problem.. thanks for this precious information !!!
My pleasure, Cheers, Duade
Thanks, that was my big fear!! Here in Italy there is a lot of humidity. In summer it is the most beautiful period because many birds of prey migrate from Africa to us. At the end of July and August there are young and adults (birds of prey) who put on a show. But temperatures of 35/38 degrees in the swampy area are difficult. This is why I prefer to arrive at night, hide in a photography shed and take photographs with very close subjects in the first 3 hours of the day. I use canon r/ and 100-400II sometimes with ext 1.4. This video was an excellent confirmation of a big doubt of mine. Thank you.
Great information thanks for your thoughts.
I live on a rather large lake in British Columbia, Canada, and also had a similar experience. While I was unsure why my pictures were soft then, I blamed myself. Using the Canon RF 800mm telelens on an R7 body but today after your video I understand why. We have sweltering summers here and yes the air temperatures vs the lake especially in the morning are similar to the conditions you have explained
I find your segment to be very educational. Thank you, three thumbs up, Warner M
Very interesting video! Just one minor point. It is not because the ground conducts heat that you see heat haze. It is because of the hear capacity of the ground. It can hold the heat overnight. So while the ground stays relatively warm, when cold air from above hits the air warmed by the ground, you get heat haze.
I shoot with the R5 and RF 100-500 combo and I have experienced this on a few wildlife shoots. Like you, I was shooting early morning in a wet environment. I could not sort out the root cause and it left me pretty frustrated. After each failed shoot, I would set up in the backyard and try to make sense of what was happening. I had presumed that I had somehow made adjustments in setting unintentionally. Thanks for this video. I will be more careful about the weather conditions when I head.
This primarily happens to me when photographing birds on ponds or lakes, any season but mostly in summer around noon. It’s quite the photo-buster and avoiding weather conducive to it has been my only solution.
Also filmed a snowstorm recently through an open window from inside, and the resulting warm air escaping definitely diminished the quality of footage.
Thanks for sharing this video Duade!!
Just ANOTHER obstacle us photographers have to contend with......
Hi Duade, your timing is impeccable with this video. My friend and I just came back from Hattah last weekend and experienced nothing but heat haze. Admittedly not the ideal time to visit the mallee, but unfortunately came away with about 2000 useless shots! Lesson learnt!😢
Hi Duade, greetings from South Africa . I really enjoy your channel.
We experience heat haze in the Kgalagadi (Kalahari desert) South Africa all time. And something we get often - just like you Aussies. After 9am in Summer it is insane as it is often 30 deg C by then...
Someone once told us to just keep the shutter button down and pray and maybe one will get through between the waves... not often, but sometimes... We actually just stop shooting anything further away that cannot fill the frame , besides record shots after 9am. light is gone anyway. I look forward to trying the lens hood trick.....
To your point about APS-c and Zoom...back in 2017 we got 7dmk2 and 100-400 because they were supposedly the best Wildlife combo...Had amazing sightings and rubbish shots. All soft in mild conditions. Traded them in for 5D4 immediately. Massive improvement and have stayed Full Frame since then. also learned that for somewhere like Masaai Mara , where one goes to the animals...it would have been fine, But in kgalagadi , where on emust remain on roads and spends all the time shooting at max focal length, it was less than ideal ...
Someone else we know got amazing Lion kill shots (sold to BBC) and swears by 7d2 and R7, but he puts them on a 500 f4.
I firmly believe that the best combo I had ever shot with was the 1DXmk2 and the EF100-400... They were made for each other...
So the rule we use is: never put a zoom on a crop if you want decent SHARP shots, unless you fill the frame and have enough speed and no haze.
prime on Crop and Zoom on Full frame... best remains prime on full frame.
This is just our lived experience, though the 100-500 on an R5 and the new lensblur slider are becoming ever more compelling.
We judge a lot of wildlife/bird pics at club and salon level and the zoom lens on APS-C images are obvious after a while. and R7 will never give the R5 quality...
Sadly - with birds and wildlife for competition - Gear matters!! the Big glass and top end bodies will always win the day.
all the big competitions publish the camera and lens details... Almost always high end gear...
Seeing your samples of heat-haze-affected shots and knowing the struggles I encounter with my own I can see the similarities clearly. I live in Florida, USA and the weather here today was beautiful except for the temperature (~5C) in the early morning. Out of 400 images taken I quickly purged half due to focus issues and I had a lot of difficulty with finding the intended target. My go-to combo is the R5 with the RF 100-500, I occasionally switch to the RF800 f11but encounter so many soft shots I’m really discouraged a lot.
Very interesting Duade - Thanks.
Nice video! I experienced morning heat haze rather often in winter after cold nights (~-15°C vs -5°C) here in southern Germany. Haven‘t experienced it on summer mornings, but sure could imagine it happening with temperature differences of ~15°C between ground temperature and the air on some summer mornings…
I always love your detailed review of the photography gear be it new lenses, or camera bodies. I hope you will test the RF 200-800 mm on the R6 Mk.2 as I am looking forward in future to have this combo. Hoping for a detailed video from your end. Keep up the good work. Cheers...!!!
Great video on heat haze, Duade! I definitely encounter heat haze in some of the classic situations you described, but the most surprising to me was up in the Alaskan arctic in summer. My buddies and I kept encountering focus issues and heat haze way more often than our typical shooting to the south. Weird things happen with 22 hours of sunlight!
Duade, I'm glad you made this video. a couple weeks back exactly the same happened to me with the Sony A6700. I was backlit in my situation and a wide open lake on a cold morning as well. I finally just thought that I need to get more familiar with my new camera, as I usually use a full frame camera as well. Right after I noticed my soft photos I went on the other side of the lake where there was more shade that covered the lake and all my photos were sharp.... so your observation makes more sense to me!
That's very cool - contemplating something fundamental about the Universe through the medium of photography. Yep, i've had this exact problem too, and at the same time of day, and in the same environment, and only last week, through an Oly 300 f/2.8 'Big Tuna', and i thought it was me. All the best from across the ditch.
Hi Duade, I'm a hang glider pilot. We look for thermals. There's another factor which could greatly affect the amount of "heat" haze you have and that is relative humidity of the air mass. The dryer the air, the more evaporation you're going to have from the lake. Moreover, moist air is lighter than dry air. So the dryer the air above, the easier it is for the moist layer on top of the lake to rise upwards. So, my guess is that a warm lake with cool, dry air on top of it, is the worst situation for low photography through that layer.
Thanks Duade, yes most definitely, the focal length directly affects the amount of heat haze as we tend to shoot longer distances through more haze
Great video Duade. Makes total sense and explains why the higher shots (moon, birds in flight) weren't suffering as much.
Great video and very useful information. I remember shooting a sandpiper last summer in similar conditions (early in the morning when the ground was warm and the air cool) and being very disappointed that pretty much all the photos were soft and couldn't figure out what I had done wrong.
I thought heat haze was more a middle of the day issue (or shooting from a warm car on a cold day) but now I know better.
Thanks for sharing this valuable piece of information.
Thanks for this video Duade, I had been mystified why some shots I took of a Wedgetailed Eagle feeding on the roadside in South Australia were so bad, the bird was soft and the dry grass background unbelievably messy. Now I know, heat haze! Keep up the good work!
Great information and super helpful in explaining this frustrating phenomenon! Thanks Duade!
Glad it was helpful!
Great video of an important topic mate. Here in Brazil we have a lot of heat haze, so it's a problem i know very well. But i am sure there are many out there that have been thinking that it is the equipment that was the problem. So this video will for sure be of very good help for many.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend.
Cheers, Bjoern
This is so interesting. I have never realised it was heat haze but it makes so much sense now. I am in South Africa and middle afternoon is very hot so I will often be affected by it. I was once in a wetland area and all my shots were soft and i actually took the lense back but we then came to the conclusion it was shakes or something but this makes a lot of sense! Thank you!
We were quite excited to go on a winter wildlife cruise here in the Boston Harbor. Temperature was a brisk 21F. I thought at first I just didn't have good enough practice shooting birds on the shore from a fast moving boat... but then I saw some of my captures of the lighthouse. So much mirage that the lighthouse looked like it was on an island floating in the air. All other images stationary objects had the tell-tale wavy lines - every straight line in the image wasn't motion blurred; it was the hazy wiggle of heat. The water temp must've been significantly warmer than the air.
4,500 images shot that day, not a single keeper. My only solace is that there was really nothing I could've done, other than put my camera back in my bag and enjoy the birds through my binoculars.
Hello from the United States; I share heat haze/distortion with our workshop attendees as most are unaware of this condition and often blame the gear. Lens hoods can cause this distortion, too. The air temperature inside the lens hood is different from the atmosphere. The only time I use a lens hood is for side light situations. Also, the more magnification, the more prominent the heat haze, and the higher the resolution of the image sensor, you will see this distortion. This happens in extreme cold, too.
I've been reviewing this lens with the EOS R5 & EOS R3
I like your idea of aiming into the air to beat the temperature "lensing." If it would not disturb the birds, you could also stand up to minimize the optical path directly through that mushier layer above the water. I've got a repeatable lens testing regimen I do at 12 feet up in the air, aimed at sharp targets 250 yards away. I learned pretty quickly that high humidity will also soften focus. When the sun came out and gave you some clarity it may have been the sunshine burning off a condition of near dew-point humidity at the surface of the pond.
Another really good informative video. In Scotland, we don't get much in the way of heat haze, I must admit. But even less light and the R7 really struggles with noise as you say. And that's with the exposure nailed on......
Hi Duade, Such a good heads up and explanation of what caused the problem. Further to previous comments, just to let you know that I opted for an RF 100-500 to use with my R7, having seen your review I thought that for my use the 200-800 was too extreme. Very pleased with my decision and the results so thanks for your really helpful reviews and summaries. These are so helpful. Cheers mate 👍😊
Heat haze happens late in summer for me, same as you said, when temperatures change between night and day, typically and unfortunately when the lights gets at its best. There is one more thing and thats focal length, going "too long" in also not good, because you can get that haze or air shiver more often because of that. So I think 500-600 is sweet spot for full frame. Thank you for video :)
I live in Missouri in the USA and deal with this pretty often. Temps vary from wind chills in the -20 or -30s F and up to around 120 F in summer. We also have ozone pollution that is visible during dry spells.
I live nearby the Mississippi River and actually do a majority of my photography in Illinois, and when I cross into Illinois the elevation is 30+ feet lower. It creates some absolutely insane fog conditions over the agricultural fields and a couple of local lakes. I assume that has something to do with the slightly lower elevation and the Mississippi being right there too.
This explains a few things that I've experienced when using my longer lenses.
Thanks for this, Duade.
My pleasure, Cheers, Duade
You may have just solved my issue. I've been searching for answers with soft images of wild horses. I live in New Mexico and we have wild horses that stay out in the sage fields of the desert. I photographed them many times with no issues. Recently I got a new camera, the R8, and I went out shooting them again, twice. Both times the images were soft. On playback, the focus box shows the focus nailed the eyes. I thought, maybe the animal detection wasn't working right or something, but I bet it was a heat-haze. Weird to think that could happen as it was so cold, but after watching your video it makes sense. I know the camera can nail focus because I pick up eagle eyes at 50 yards. Interesting video. Thanks. My issues were with the 100-400 5.6-8 on the R8. Previously I used this lens on the R7 with no issues, but I'm guessing it was just better atmospheric conditions.
Fascinating explanation, great video, thanks for posting
Glad it was helpful!
I've had photos ruined by heat haze early one morning when shooting low level shots of a bird that was only 4 or 5 metres away. I didn't want to have my tripod extended because I would be looking down on the bird so I dropped it down to 0.5 metres. A great viewpoint but I nearly cried at the results. It was a spring morning with strong sunshine but the ground had been frozen overnight.
Yep, It is very hard looking at soft photos when you though they were sharp. Cheers, Duade
Great, honest video. Thank you
I had the same experience when photographing in Pilansberg National Park. My 100-400 mkII suddenly started giving soft shots on my 80D. Switched to the 40D aka “the tank” - same problem. Contemplating a probable expensive repair to the lens I notice the heat shimmer on the dam where the Elephants were bathing and having a great time in the water. Quick test with the 100 Macro confirmed the heat haze. I was very relieved and everything returned to normal later in the afternoon when everything cooled down.
Thanks, Duade for sharing this insight.
I have been in this situation - with R5 and RF100-500 - a number of times. Suspecting HH, and this video makes me firmly believe this to be the issue. Seeing your explanatory graphic it is clear to me, that shooting in parallel to and just above the water-surface will maximize the issue. Just as distance to target will increase it. And with long effective FL it will be enlarged, too.
Interesting comment about the lens shade - will try that asap.
Regards
Peder Krabbe
100%!!! Yep I to only discovered the affects of heat haze yesterday and finally solved the mystery as to why the sharpness with my EOS R and EF 28-300 combo has been hit and miss at times. My situation yesterday - I was shooting low to ground around a dam at midday and the conditions were warm and bright sun and to the naked eye everting looked nice and clear but I was struggling to get a sharp image and couldn’t understand why, so so frustrating! I have been doubting my equipment’s performance and in particular the sharpness of my lens. I persevered to improve focus by switching to manual focus and zoomed x10 to pinpoint the target and OMG on the screen I could now clearly see what was happening as my target was shimmering/dancing around causing the blur and the soft results . I then tried to experiment a little so I cranked up the shutter speed to 5000 and used auto iso and managed to get sharper and useable images. I love your work, very much appreciated 😊
Excellent information, Duade. I don't own the 200-800 yet, but I've seen very similar heat haze problems here in the Columbus, Ohio USA area with my 100-500L when the conditions are "right". Along with heat haze near the ground or water surface, I also encounter atmospheric haze at long distances from the subject. The bottom line, to me, is that these long lenses will always be limited when trying to shoot faraway subjects (until some sort of AI comes along that can correct for heat haze, but I'm not holding my breath).
Hey Duade! I find it amazing how well our eyes work compared to a camera's AF. Maybe one day, with AI, a lot of distractions that ruin a shot now will be eliminated or greatly reduced. I may be picking up this lens in a few months, so I'm excited to see that great results can be had under the right conditions. Until autofocus gets almost as good as our eyes, we will all need all the advice like this you've been giving the photography community for all of these years! Thank you!
Also the lens is for full frame bodies so the circle of light resolved is to cover a full frame sensor so the crop sensor doesn't pick up a significant amount of the light, reducing image quality and increasing noise. You need to times the aperture by 1.6 to get the real light being transmitted to the crop sensor.
Heat haze is a common occurrence for me, even in the Pacific Northwest. There is definitely a sweet spot during the day when you can shoot over water or sand, or other surfaces that may reflect/store heat.
Like you found, shoot other things until the temperature evens out.
Thanks Duade! I encountered this yesterday. As I was driving away from a location I noticed a hawk, pulled over, shot a couple of frames through the open passenger-side car window and the difference in temperature spoilt the focus.
I also got this on a cold morning shooting low over a river with large boulders.
I think you're right about the haze coming from a temperature difference and it's amplified as you zoom in.
In this case, chimping your shots pays off.
Northern U.S. (Wisconsin) here. I have noticed this exact same thing as well while taking photos of birds at our local wildlife areas. This usually happens during the summer as our winters get quite cold and we don't notice heat haze as much during this time. I'm really loving these videos and am getting even more tempted to purchase this lens.
hey duade,
your description of how heat haze is produced is pretty much spot on. Air acts no different to a fluid. Hot air is less dense than cold air and therefore rises, not mix with the cold air. light will behave differently through different air densities in that it will distort or bend the light ever so slightly as we see on hot days. The higher the focal length, the more pronounced this will appear. Its a big issue for large telescopes and observatories, hence why some observatories are located on a tall mountain (mauna loa in hawaii comes to mind) because the heat haze or any form of mirage is greatly reduced from the thinner air.
I work in environmental and do alot of field work in the west australian goldfields and pilbara but i also get an opportunity to take photos for work. it gets bloody hot there (30-40+) and so photographing a target is impossible at 30 meters and above. the only way to lessen is to get as close to the target as possible so light has less distance to travel and lower the focal range. bit tricky but patience pays off eventually
Um, air is a fluid
Thanks for sharing mate, I appreciate it, some great wildlife out your way. Cheers, Duade
YES...this happens where I go as well. Here in the Boston area. I thought is was my lens when I first used it. I do agree, if I go to 600, it is clearly visible. YET, there have been times at 200mm it is present. GREAT content..THANK YOU!
Thank you for this video. I have experienced the type of soft images you showcased here and for the life of me I could not figure out what was causing this type of image degradation but as soon as I saw your examples, it looked exactly the same as what I was getting, and I knew then that this is what I had been experiencing. I do a lot of nature photographing from my car and never realized that the heat could also be coming from under the car and causing this effect. I live in Houston and do a lot of shooting on the gulf coast. The heat and humidity here in the summer makes it very uncomfortable to shoot outside even in the early morning hours. Shooting from my air-conditioned car is, sometimes, the only way I can get out and get any camera time in the summer. Thank you again for this video. I'll make some changes to the way I shoot from my car, like turning it off and letting the temps equalize a bit now before I start shooting. Cheers!
Thanks so much for this review. I have to say I was a little panicked to begin with, but when you revealed the heat haze was the problem, I was relieved. I can't stand our hot summers and rarely go out during them. So heat haze is not something I worry about. I look forward to your full review, as I have an R7 and would like to get this lens to give me greater reach shooting the moon and our beautiful birds in wetlands etc. Thanks again Duade.
The other day I was outside photographing in -20C. The sky was cloud free and the sun was shining. The sun reflecting on the snow covered ground made all my shots blurry. I was laying in the snow photographing foxes with my 200-600mm. The auto focus was struggling and none of the pictures was sharp. I also recorded some video and the footage got that wavy blurry look like a hot day on the beach.
Great video as always, keep it up!
Brilliant topic. I think the term heat haze is misleading because as you point you, it is heat difference, air disturbance. I do a lot of my photography on a large peatland, and the atmospheric disturbance is terrible at times. I''ve had similar problems over water. These problems even occur when it is freezing, but usually when there is direct sun. I've suddenly thought, there's something wrong with my AF, my lens, shutter shock or whatever. I think the most reliable guide is to look for the plane of focus elsewhere in the image. It's clear with that Coot on your photo, where the vegetation on the sharpest plane of focus, is also fuzzy. If you see, some sharp detail on the plane of focus, elsewhere, your focus is off. On the same peatland site I mention, you will get sharp photos of flying birds at the same time you can't get anything sharp on the ground. I've still to decide whether the 100-500 or 200-800mm to go with my R7, as I'm still using the 100-400mm mkII.
Thanks Duade, a common problem up here in NW NSW, more noticeable on the R7 than the R5 but very frustrating. Heat haze can end the session a lot earlier than planned unfortunately. As always another enjoyable and informative video. Ian
I've experienced this in cold temperatures and warm temperatures, in cold temps, removing your lens hood helps and it's also equally important to let your lens adjust to the temp outside.
I experienced the effects of heat haze yesterday on several occasions while shooting a juvenile Swamp Harrier perched on a log on the ground. As soon as it took off and went above the foliage background into an area of sky as the background. Once with a sky background, my shots were tack-sharp!
Yes I get heat distortion fairly frequently, when shooting early mornings at the beach or any kind of water. It’s not all the time but certainly happens when I have a really nice shot otherwise. And that’s with the r7 and the 100-400, it happened so much at first I thought the lens or the camera body was defective but the sharp pics are really sharp, and after experimenting I figured out I what it was. There’s a few national wildlife refuges that have wildlife drives where you’re prohibited from getting out of your car, so I’ll stretch that rule in certain cases by turning the car completely off, and leaning halfway out of my window haha.
Thanks for sharing mate and glad you figured it out on your own, can be very frustrating and confusing otherwise. Good idea re the car. Cheers, Duade
Excellent insight. I haven’t experienced that here on Phillip Island but have in the high country around Mt Feathertop where the eucalyptus trees do what they do in the heat.
Thank you for sharing this idea. I recently had same issue not even one sharp photo and the blur looked the way you had in your examples, I did not understand but is makes sense. In my case it was early morning short after sunrise direct sun and 3 °C (so not sure if we can call it heat haze) but I guess there was a high temp difference between dark ground and air. The Sigma is not the sharpest but I had so many nice shots but this morning the only sharp where the birds in flight but all on the ground where for the bin.
This reminds me when I first got my Canon 300mm F2.8LIS and the converters I was doing some experiments pixel peeping and seeing awful blur it was supposed to have been Canons sharpest lens. I did eventually figure it out after being devastated for all the money I had spent. It was UK winter freezing outside I was nice and warm inside with the conservatory door open shooting targets outside. I was relieved when I figured it out and went on to enjoy my lens for years even with the 2xII and 1.4xII. All I had to do was just go outside and it was all tack sharp from the garden.
Excellent video and information!
A lot of people are quick to blame heat haze but unfortunately I think part of the issue is the lens coating and only 3 elements are UD. This may also explain the issue some have encountered with highlight bleed and white birds looking rather hazy especially when using an APS-C body. I'd like to see a comparison how this lens stacks up to the RF 800mm f11, 100-500mm with 1.4x and the Sigma and Tamron 150-600mm in this regard. I'm guessing it might perform better than the 800 f11 but is on a similar level to the Sigma and Tamron (I had the G2 which was rather hazy in some situations until you stop down to f9, but going to f11 diffraction kicks in). Pangolin Photo Safaris has a review of this lens with a sample comparison with the 800 f5.6 and it's clear that the latter handles heat haze much better. 60X spotting scopes can also handle heat haze quite well, at least for viewing with the human eye but I find that digiscoping is a struggle due to the alignment and fighting between the autofocus of the smartphone and the manual focus of the scope.
I recently invested in a Nikon Z8 and was keen to get out into the field and start shooting.
I went to a wetland with extensive mudflats to photograph some waders.
During the session I encountered some Red capped Plovers which I was able to lie down on the mud and get some great shots.
Unfortunately to my great disappointment none of the images were sharp.
So here I am having invested a small fortune only to get soft images.
The same thing happened the following day and has happened on a couple of occasions since.
Always the same scenario shooting close to the ground on hot days.
Clearly heat haze as I don’t encounter the problem in other situations.
It was good to hear that even experienced people like yourself encounter the same issues.
Thanks again for the video.
I enjoy your channel immensely.
Duade, thank you for this video. As others have said, heat haze has an impact in many situations. Here in Canada, as one example, we can experience heat haze in the early spring over farm fields. The air is still cold but, in parts of the fields where the bare earth is exposed, the sun warms the earth more quickly compared to snow covered parts of the fields. Even my Canon 500mm F4 can focus in those conditions.
Great video Duade 👍🏻 Here in the UK it's not as common, it happened to me about a month ago I was belly down in the sand near a beach and the air temp was around 6 degrees Celsius and of course, the sand mud and water were a lot hotter as the beach was sat in the afternoon sun. And I saw a Grey Herron and I got down and took so many shots and then I got home and all of them were really blurry and soft, at the time I didn't give this a thought but it's really frustrating especially when you don't know what's causing it. It can also be caused by the lens hood temp especially if you're shooting out a car door window etc.
Hey Duade, it would be interesting to see if standing shots also suffered as much as laying down at water level. Also, if a polarising filter would help clean the image up in such conditions. As other have mentioned, if the temperature of the lens hood played a part for near lens distortion. Maybe a follow up video testing all three options is in order 😁
A polarizing filter likely won't help any in the presence of air turbulence, unfortunately. You'll lose a full stop of exposure for no benefit. Bummer!
@@marcmurisonair turbulence no but haze in sunlight yes, hence worth at least testing.
I'm aware of heat haze, but I wouldn't have thought it would make that much of a difference! I'll keep that in mind for the future. Thanks!
Currently back in the UK and took some early morning shots. The ambient temp was 2 degrees C but I could clearly see water vapour in the air as it started to evaporate from the frosty land. This gave me the exact same results as you had with heat haze. 150 shots all soft.