bronaldo
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Not really...but here are a few things that can help get less of it in a given location....
If you are shooting from shore over a body of water, the haze usually starts to get stronger over the land than over the water. Get right to the edge of the water and you may have no haze. Stand just a few feet back from the water and you can have shot ruining haze because you are shooting through the stronger haze over the land.
Height....especially over water but can apply to land....if you shoot from a higher angle you will often get less haze ruining the shot. I've had this so extreme that if I was shooting my camera on the ground (via the LCD flip screen) and was getting haze ruining shots, I could just raise the camera a foot off the ground and have sharp shots.
Apart from shooting early morning when heat shimmer may be lower - there is little that can be done.Are there in-the-field techniques for reducing heat shimmer?
Good question and good answers, too. I guess the world is the world. We can get closer if possible so there is less air between us and the subject. Apply some dehaze in post but that only goes so far. Maybe embrace it as a visual depth cue that something on our flat photo is farther away because it looks more and more like the sky or the general value of the surrounding area with less and less contrast as it recedes.
Not really...but here are a few things that can help get less of it in a given location....
If you are shooting from shore over a body of water, the haze usually starts to get stronger over the land than over the water. Get right to the edge of the water and you may have no haze. Stand just a few feet back from the water and you can have shot ruining haze because you are shooting through the stronger haze over the land.
Height....especially over water but can apply to land....if you shoot from a higher angle you will often get less haze ruining the shot. I've had this so extreme that if I was shooting my camera on the ground (via the LCD flip screen) and was getting haze ruining shots, I could just raise the camera a foot off the ground and have sharp shots.
Go out early…turn the car heater or A/C off, open windows, and dress appropriately if using the car as a blind in either winter or summer…and get closer are about the only solutions. I had not thought about arbitrage‘s comment bout haze over land and getting right to the water edge…but he’s right.Possibly silly question here: Are there in-the-field techniques for reducing heat shimmer? I mean something other than getting closer. I'm assuming that there isn't, but I wanted to ask.
There's also the bubble of air inside the lens hood to consider when the lens temperature differs from ambient. The hood on one of my lenses has a door that can be opened to rotate a polarizing filter. If I don't remove the hood entirely I leave the door open to maximize air circulation, and positioned toward the ground to reduce the chances of strong light sources causing flare.Great replies above, but just to add the obvious for year round shooting. You may not be able to do much for atmospheric distortion for distant shots but when doing things like shooting from a vehicle or shooting out an open window on a house or the like there are things you can do to minimize local heat turbulence that can ruin photos. Specifically:
- Shooting from a warm place to a colder place or vice versa can cause local heat turbulence so shooting out of something like an open car window works best if the temps inside and outside the car are roughly the same. So in the winter drive around with with windows down and a relatively cold car (bundle up) and in the summer don't drive around in an air conditioned car and then roll down windows when you see an interesting wildlife subject. Either of those can lead to a lot of heat related air turbulence as the warm and cold air interact.
- Same applies to shooting out open house windows or similar.
- If shooting from a car it's best to get out and away from the vehicle (if safe for you and your wildlife subjects) and if you do, don't shoot across the hot hood of the car or across the heat rising from a hot muffler.
That does nothing for distant heat waves and atmospheric distortion at a distance but can help reduce local atmospheric distortion related to heat differences.