LittleRed

This past summer I and my wife spent a very enjoyable trip doing a swing through western Canada and some of the northern U.S states. Our purpose was twofold, first birdwatching and secondly photography of those critters we saw. We visited many excellent wildlife areas in both countrys and collected close to 8000 to 9000 digital images. Two of the most excellent areas we visited were the C.J Sayer NWR in North Dakota and the Bowdoin NWR in Montana. This last one is a very special place especially for birders whom like to get good pictures of a large number of bird species all located in a fairly small area. I highly recommend that if you can visit here, DO!
It was at these places the strange occurrence/problem happened. It is something I had never run into before and hopefully will never again. I'll use our visit to Bowdoin to illustrate what occurred. As we were on a strict regimen we only allowed ourselves one day for this refuge. Luckily that day was sunny (perhaps too sunny). We spent a total of 8 to 9 hours in the refuge during which time I accumulated close to 800 images. The equipment I was utilizing was a Canon T6i DSLR along with two lenses, my walkabout Canon 300 L Prime along with my Tamron 150-600 G2 (on a tripod with a remote trigger). All through my field time I periodically checked the images on the small camera LCD screen and all appeared well. Any I thought were problematic were erased in the field at the time. I didn't bother to download the images to my laptop when returning to the motel but instead took the SD card from the shoot and stowed it away samely in my suitcase. I do this with all my shoots for each individual site visited. However, when I got home and downloaded these images to my desktop lo and behold I found that a large majority of the images (over 90%) were in fact very poor in quality, the focus of them apeared to be quite a bit off. They were to me basically unusable. They could not be cropped/enlarged to any extent, something which when taking pictures of small birds is essential. At first I thought I had a camera problem but an examination of pictures taken prior to these sites in British Columbia and also of pictures taken after at two refuges in Michigan (Seney and Shiawassee) illustrated that the camera was working flawlessly.
The only difference we could see that could have created the occurrence/problem was the weather conditions at the time. At this time in August we were in the middle of an extreme heat wave all through most of southern Canada and the northern USA. At the time of the shoot at Bowdoin the thermometre on our car was showing 105F and the humidity on the radio was pegged at 93%. Thusly we were in fact on August 10 taking our pics in very extreme temperatures and humidity. This was just as true when we proceeded and birded in North Dakota on the 12th. So, it appears that the cause of my problems and why I lost the use of many images was due to the very extreme weather conditions. Has any of you Hoggers ever run ito this type of problems. Up here in the great north we seldom ever see anything even close to those conditions. Myself, I've been behind a camera, either film or digital, for nigh onto 60 years and can honestly say I have never seen anything like that happen. Perhaps this was just a problem with my personal camera, but my wife also had some likewise problems but at a much lesser scale. (she uses a Canon T6s with a 300 L prime) so I don't think that is the reason. Or perhaps it is a Canon problem, I hope not. What say Hoggers, any thoughts on this??????
In conclusion I find that you cannot depend at all on the small LCD screen on the camera to any great extend and DON'T take any pics if you can help it when the temperature rises above 100F. I guess one could sing a ditty like Jerry Reed (I think) - “when yer hot yer hot”, while I would probably be singing “when it's hot it may be 2 hot”

LittleRed

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

High temperature and high humidity means there is a lot of wet, moving atmosphere between you and your subject, which will effect image quality, particularly with long lenses and tight crops, like you have in birding. For me, with Landscapes, it ain't no big deal.

Could you post one of the best of the unusable images so we could see what you're talking about.

And, if you have the current Lightroom Classic CC, did you try running them through the Develop panel Auto Tone feature?

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

Sounds like water vapor in the air, happens over oceans and lakes too, your eye doesn't notice it as much but the camera does.

LittleRed

I agree this could be some of the problem. I have shot is high temperatures/humidity before in places like the Everglades, but never in this conditions this extreme. As for my Photo Editor, I do not use any of the higher end programs as I am not interested in spending countless time before a computer screen. My main program is a free one I got countless ages ago with I think was a 3mp Olympus P/S. I usually take about a minute to process my pics to what I want.
I've attached a copla pics that even though they are close, they are not the usual quality I usually get with the two lenses I use. The first (Willet @ 300mm) is taken with my Canon 300mm "L" Prime while the second (Marbled Godwit @ 552mm with tripod and remote trigger) was with my Tamron 150-600 G2. Like I said, I usually can get way better results.

LittleRed (Ron)

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LittleRed

As I said in the other post, water vapor or the like could be a factor. But like I said I have in other times shot in areas where water vapor would be present but I have never run into as much of a problem as I did this time. It has been a learning experience.

LittleRed (Ron)

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

High temps, humidity, haze etc etc etc (and the use of a telephoto lens) will all produce degraded IQ and a sort of overall grey/blue cast with subdued colors, contrast and saturation. All the atmospheric distortion will be recorded by the camera while your brain/eye tend to smooth it out. Looking through a powerful scope or binoculars you can see the same results. Some of the old shots I took in Vietnam show the same effects and the further away the subject is the worse it will look.
It is one of the reasons why the "haze" filter and sliders in Lightroom, Photoshop and other PP apps were so welcome when they came out. Yes, you can do the same thing with other parts of the PP apps but having a combined "haze" adjustment made it easier and faster.

As to the make every shot count mind set and trying for perfect shots that need no PP. Well sometimes it just isn't possible to any great degree. I started with film in the 50s, then went digital in the late 90s and dropped film altogether by about 2003. It took me a while to get used to the idea of virtually unlimited shots available and I still shoot less than people who learned on digital, like my daughter - at a friend's wedding we were two of the 6 family and friends asked to photograph the wedding and reception (plus only God knows how many others doing it on their own of the aprx 200 people who attended) and I shot aprx 400 frames with my two bodies (and I did the "pose with Uncle so and so and friends XY&Z shots"), my daughter did over 1200 frames while also partying with her friends and helping with the food - many short bursts of people dancing. The digital camera and its burst setting is a God Send for any moving subjects, sports, action, wildlife, birds etc. - even if every frame is properly exposed and focused you will find a small % where the subject is in a great position/pose that no one is fast enough to spot, recognize and shoot on single shot with any high % of success.

By the way, your two wading birds, you are too far away and the haze/humidity in the air kept anything from being in focus.
I hope you don't mind but I did a quick 5 minute edit on the first one, with a crop - still not great but some improvements. I adjusted contrast, reduced highlights, tweaked colors and saturation and added some clarity. But as said the haze kept everything just a tad out of focus in addition to the contrast and color problems it introduced. I set PS to not save anything and deleted the image as soon as I loaded it to UHH. Your posts and my edit look better in download than the thumbnail.

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Bill_de Loc: US

I had the same problem yesterday trying to shoot a bird on the other side of a fairly large pond. I never had a real bad problem there before. I'm not sure, but I think in my case it was because the night time temperatures were very low, but things warmed up very quickly as soon as the sun was up.

I ditched most of the shots from there.

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SonyA580 Loc: FL in the winter & MN in the summer

The data for #1 says focus of 35' to infinity; #2 says 268' to 1857'. The distances for #1 sound reasonable but #2 is questionable. Looks like something is messin' with your focus. I don't have a clue what could do that except I sometimes use the AF Lock and forget to toggle it off.

Stardust Loc: Central Illinois

Here is another thought if you were out to Montana this summer, you may have been compressing smoke in the area from the California fires. We were in South Dakota & Wyoming and their were days that I could not get a good long distance photo because of the haze, although it wasn't that noticeable with the naked eye but locals confirmed it for me. The same happened to me in Beijing & Shanghai this past May - it was difficult to get clear, sharp photos more than 20-30 feet distances. Anyway, just a thought.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

As Robert so aptly demonstrated, your images are rescueable. Now is the time to go for one of those outstanding photo editors like Lightroom Classic CC. Yes, you will spend more time (not necessarily "countless") using a computer, but look what the difference can be with a modicum of effort. If you're not interested in investing in your workflow, then you'll continue to be disappointed in your results.

I can't sugarcoat it any more.

Capn_Dave

That is strange I live and shoot in Florida. In the summer the humidity hit 99% all the time and it is not raining. If there is haze I can see it in the distance
I never have this problem if the subject is within 100 yards. Now it I am trying to shoot way out there, yes it is a problem. Lightroom's haze filter works
quite well and will salvage them.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Not the camera. As other say, atmospheric issues that are hard to see on the small screen under less than ideal light.

Jrhoffman75 Loc: Conway, New Hampshire

To LittleRed. Since you are using an Olympus software with your Canon Rebel cameras I assume you are shooting JPEG?

I have two suggestions: 1. Download and use the free DPP software that Canon provides. 2. Consider shooting RAW. If you use DPP the software will open your RAW files seamlessly and if you are happy with what you see you are done. Just “Convert and Save” and you have your finished image. If you need to edit you have more data in a RAW file.

If you decide to continue shooting JPEG I still recommend DPP. Processing software has advanced significantly.

mizzee Loc: Boston,Ma

The dehaze filter/slider in Lightroom Classic alone is worth the subscription price and you won’t have to spend countless hours. In fact, you can make the correction in one photo and then automagically apply the same change to the other photos in that series. I am not a technical person and have found that LR is fairly intuitive. All is not lost! hope this helps.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I agree with the "weathermen."

A suggestion: make your posts shorter and have more paragraphs.