LittleRed

Problems with both my lenses, the 300 and the 150-600. My wife also had similar problems with her 300 but not to the extent of mine.

LittleRed (Ron)

LittleRed

First, would love to get closer to fill the viewfinder, but in most cases this was impossible (cant walk on water)

Secondly, my pic processing program does not contain all those fancy options.

Thirdly, no time to download and check. We were on a pretty strict regimen and only had one day for this refuge in Montana. Even if I had downloaded that night after the shoot I would not be able to do a reshoot the next day as we had a full days drive to get to the next booked motel in North Dakota

LittleRed (Ron)

LittleRed

I totally agree with you on this one. His posts are ones that I never miss, regardless of the topic.

LittleRed (Ron)

LittleRed

Sorry Gerry, am gonna be a bit longwinded again. But hopefully will be my last post on this thread.

First I would like to thank everybody whom has posted a reply to my query on my stange occurence this past August. However, it appears for the most part the replies are heading in a different direction from what I intended. I totally agree with all of you regarding the reasons of why my pictures would/could be of poor quality. All reasons given by all are valid. However, I also believe something else going on here. That the extreme weather conditions were also playing a game with my camera. I say this because even though roughly 90% of my pictures were of poor quality, the other 10% were not. After looking back at the shoot that day I see that when I carried my camera set-up in the car (air-conditioned, from one area to another) I saw that the first few shots taken at the new setup were not as degraded as those taken after the camera was in the elements for awhile. Like I said, I didn't notice this till I downloaded the images to my desktop and saw the time frame for all the pictures. So, in my mind I do believe that when the weather is extreme in temperature and humidity the inner workings of the camera can be somewhat affected. (at least on my Canon T6i).

I will also say at this time that my photo's taken are probably not as important to me as they would be to most of you Hoggers out there. My number one priority is the hobby of Birdwatching, i.e. observing in the wild as many species as possible. In order to do that we visit as many places as possible, trying to go to areas where we know there are species that we have never seen. For example in Bowdoin I was able to see 3 new “lifers” (species never before seen by me in person), these being the California Gull, the Mountain Bluebird and the Chestnut-collared Longspur. These gave me an additional 6 new species seen during this trip bringing my North American Life List to near 500 species total. That's my real love and the fact that I may get a picture, good or bad, of one of them is a great bonus.

As I said above about 90% of my Bowdoin pictures were of poor quality (abt 800). But they are still good enough for identification purposes. That means that 10% or roughly 80 were quite usable, and of roughly 3% of the total (24) were very good to excellent. This is the usual breakdown to my photo shoots while doing a fast photoshoot. So I ended up with enough good photos to use for my projects (post cards, calendars etc) to satisfy me.

So far this year I have visited/photographed extensively in Wildlife Areas in the USA (Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Montana, North Dakota) and in Canada (Ontario, Saskachewan, Alberta, British Columbia) during which time I have accumulated probably more than 30,000 images, mostly birds and/or other wildlife. By using the above formula it means that I have at least 3,000 good pictures and at least 1,000 very good/excellent ones. Tis enough for me and my purposes. I should say here also that I only shoot in Jpeg, not RAW. I usually takes me a minute or so to process each of my pictures on a very basic processor. Somebody said I should shoot RAW and process with a larger name brand program. I dread to think how long it would take to process all the pics I accumulated this year if they were RAW. I should also say here now that my wife is also an accomplished nature photographer so all I said above you can at least double the number of images for our family.

So as I said before, the purpose of this query was not to request information on how to get better pics or fix the ones I do have. After 60 years of looking through a viewfinder and even running my own darkroom in the film days I believe that I know quite well how to do that. During that time I've had the opportunity to work a camera in the heat and humidity of the Southern States to the frigid wintery north of Canada. But never to these extremes and never have I seen problems quite this bad before. But I do thank you for all your suggestions, tis appreciated. Its just that my curiousity was tweeked regarding what was happening while working in the field in very extreme weather conditions. This has been a bit a learning experience for me. All I wanted to know is if anybody else had ever ran into a like occurrence such as I did. And to a lesser degree I think I have. Again, thanks for the postings and best to all for the remainder of 2018.

(just checked my “keeper” file of the pics I have that I rate as very good to excellent and find so far this year I have 2,834 images)

LittleRed (Ron)

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

I think someone covered the temp problem. A/C in car, camera and lens gets cool. Take out of car first few picks OK, then the cool camera/lens causes light condensation/fogging which goes away after a while if you keep it out in the heat long enough. Add in the heat waves in the air, haze or similar in the air and you get the problems your images show. And if the temp difference is extreme you could be getting expansion/shrinking of the actual body of the camera and lens or at least the mount(s) which could slightly misalign your lens and cause focus problems.

DMGill Loc: Colorado

The smoke from many fires was particularly bad in Colorado this summer and severely detracted from normal visibility.

aubreybogle Loc: Albuquerque, NM

You did magnificent work in post on these images. You are a real artist. Wish I had your insight and skills.

aubreybogle Loc: Albuquerque, NM

Same problem in New Mexico.

ChuckMc Loc: Prescott, AZ

I'm really running out of time, so I apologize if someone has stated this possibility. You're getting in and out of the car to take pictures; you have high humidity, and maybe the out-of-focus is really a light condensation on the lens. Sorry for the loss of all those pictures.
Chuck