My Session Was Ruined with Soft Shots! Here's Why... 

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.

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

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

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

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!

Excellent reminder, thanks Duade! Fabulous video!

It's so good having this info that you and Jan provide. Helps so much. Thanks.

Oh god, so good to know this, very many of us think that the gear is the problem.. thanks for this precious information !!!

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.

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 😁

This explains a few things that I've experienced when using my longer lenses. Thanks for this, Duade.

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.

Interesting! Thanks for the info Duade

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.

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

I watched the same programme, very true. Also beneficial to leave your camera bag in the coldest room in the house overnight before a shoot, leaves less time for your gear to acclimatise when you get to your chosen photo shoot.

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 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

I have experienced this on cold mornings in florida. Did not realize this was the reason. Thanks for pointing this out.

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 :)

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 RU-vid. 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.

Great information and super helpful in explaining this frustrating phenomenon! Thanks Duade!

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.

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!😢

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

I’ve run into it twice. Once on the tundra outside of Nome, Alaska. I was photographing Bristle-thighed Curlews at first light and all the shots were soft from the haze just above the ground. The other time was photographing a Crested Caracara nest in the Sonoran Desert west of Tucson, Arizona. I was about 75 yards from the nest in a saguaro cactus and was getting sharp shots. But the male would often rest in a saguaro that was a couple hundred yards away and the heat haze made it impossible to get any sharp shots of him and his cactus. Video was even worse. Thanks for this video, it’s a good reminder to be aware of the possibility of the heat haze.

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!

Great information thanks for your thoughts.

The contrast between those early photos and the sharp swamphen is insane - great video!

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.

Very interesting Duade - Thanks.

Hi Duade, definitely struck this problem in the early morning in Brisbane lately in swampy areas. Temperature around 25°C and relative humidity around 90%. Day temperatures in the low 30°‘s C means ground warmer early than air. So much for the golden hour. Better a few hours after sunrise. It makes you think of using these super long lenses these days when looking for reach as opposed to just filling the frame. The new OM 150-600 is 1200mm FFE, up to 2400mm FFE it’s a 2x TC. For me 800mm is about as much as you generally want to go unless really good conditions. It’s funny how we are talking about this with the heat of summer and our friends on the other side of the World have the same problem with the cold. I have noticed similar issues if shooting across a light coloured path into a grassed area swampy or not. The shimmer off a warm path can be really impactful even over a short distance.

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.

Thanks for video, I wait everytime new video from you :)

Great problem solving! Thank you

No limit of learning new things for photography. Thank you very very very much...

Great video on the effects of heat haze. Excellent sharing of experiences from viewers as well! Acclimatizing your gear is important. Steam fog occurs in the fall when water temperatures don't cool right away but air temperature does.

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...!!!

I hadn't thought of heat haze being an issue like that before. Interesting and worth keeping in mind.

Hello Duade, thank you for sharing this! it's a common phenomenon here in France, especially when I'm in the middle of the water with my floating hide because in addition I'm at water level with my Canon R7 and my RF200-800! an example last week we are in winter here we had 8 to 10° in the morning quite early (in principle it is between -5 and 2 or 3°) the water was at 4 or 5 degrees...In very good weather time the force of the sun's rays quickly warms the surface of the water! It's difficult to get sharp photos in these conditions! A little tip: sometimes removing the sun hood allows you to regain sharpness because the hot air circulating inside it reinforces the problem! This also leads us to a form of humility whatever our equipment, it remains wild photography and fortunately we have no control over certain phenomena, certain disturbances! This is also the beauty of adventure -)

Thanks for sharing this video Duade!! Just ANOTHER obstacle us photographers have to contend with......

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!

Great, honest video. Thank you

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!

Hi, thank you for this video! I immediately thought about heat haze with the first pic. That's something that I have to deal quite often in France. When that happens to you, try removing the lens hood and putting it back on to replace the trapped hot air from your bag / vehicle. It's hard to believe how good these buckets are at trapping hot air just in front of the lens. Of course, if the heat haze happens further away, between you and the subject, there's not much to do. The first time I noticed this in my photography, I was attemting to take shots just above a road that had time to heat up during the day. I didn't even know about heat haze before that, nor how destructive it can be for image quality.

Good video. Great topic, Duade. I like a lot of the comments on this, too. Some sharp viewers out there.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fascinating explanation, great video, thanks for posting

Excellent video and information!

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......

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

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.

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.

Have an R7 and contemplating upgrading to the 200-800. Very useful video, thank you Duade

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.

Cool video DUADE 👍🏻

Been there, done that, still feeling the pain from it! Australia's last Grey-headed lapwing sighting nearly ended up a washout for me due to heat haze, my first ever twitch to boot! Every shot that was more than 10m ended up horribly blurred from heat the heat differential between the air and ground.

Another great video. Thank you Duade. I have been taking photographs for 62 years. It is the experience of photography that matters to me. To have a, lovely, photo of a bird or animal I saw is what matters. Cheers Judith

Great video Duade. Makes total sense and explains why the higher shots (moon, birds in flight) weren't suffering as much.

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.

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!

I run across this often here in Delaware, USA. The longer the focal length and narrower the field of view, the more exaggerated the effect. Sometimes even the lens hood contributes to the problem. It’s also present at any time of year, hot or cold. As you mentioned, whenever there is a good amount of difference between surface and air temperatures, the heat waves are present. I try to stay away from longer distances with subjects at or near ground level. On really bad days, I’ll concentrate on areas with more shade. Most importantly, on those days I keep reminding myself my gear is fine and the atmosphere is not. Great video on a topic that is mostly overlooked.

Great info to know your environmental conditions and not jump to conclusions on the hardware for sure the R7 is better suited to bright, clear conditions, and then it excels.

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 👍😊

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

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!

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.

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!

Lens hood tip is very helpful. Never thought of this!. Years ago I was shooting Turtle Doves here in the uk with Canon 40D and 500f4 mk 1. On the top of a hill, sunny and hot, hazy with some atmosphere pollution. Every single shot was soft . A day later a weather front passed through and cleared the haze. I returned to shoot again and nearly every shot was sharp.

Wow, how convenient this video was, because at the moment I watched it I was traveling to Chile for birding. I photographed for a few days in the Andes mountains and as it is summer here, the temperatures and sun are very strong throughout the day and the areas are very open, which makes it difficult to get close to the birds. Most of the species I photographed here had problems with heat haze, as I couldn't get close enough, but when I could, the photos with the Sigma 150-600 and the R7 were perfect and full of details. I had never photographed before in a location where it was so difficult to get sharp shots as it is here.

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.

I am surprised to see this video exactly when i noticed this ohenominal ladt week when i went to shoot flamingoes with new 100-500. I was disappointed with the soft images and initially blamed the gear, only later realised heat haze was killing my pictures. Thanks a ton for a video as it confirms my speculation. I arm from India and even though it is winter it gets hot gere

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 !!!!

Great advice

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.

This actually explains what happened last Saturday when I took a 100-500mm out to test with my R5. . Winter here in Switzerland and was by the lake the sun had a bit of warmth with the mist bruning off. The shots I took over the lake all had issues the ones on land were fine. Cheers for the heads up, good vid 👍

We have winter here in Denmark right now, so when I've driven maybe half an hour to get to my photo spot, it's hot in the cabin, so I turn off the heat in the car, roll down the windows on both sides before I'm completely forward, and am ready to shoot immediately, if I don't, heat haze occurs immediately. In the summer it is extremely rare that it occurs so long that I only photograph up to 3 hours after sunrise. The further the subject is away, the more heat haze

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.

Hi Duade, last weekend I was on the field photographing Hen harriers. It was -13 degrees in the morning and everything was frozen, incl grass. And when the sun came out, the "heat haze" from melting ice on the grass completely ruined half day of shooting and recording. I used 200-800 and also tried 100-500, both with same result ofc. :) One thing to add, with 200-800 capabilities I noticed that Im trying to photograph objects which are farther than I would normally photograph with shorter lens. This means much more haze (aggregation in the atmosphere) experiences then before. Its good to realize this. Thx for the video! You are the best, cheers. Tomas

Hello Duade, thank you for sharing this experience and knowledge! In the first minutes I was a bit schocked and for a moment I had abandoned my decision to buy an RF 200-8000 mm later this year. I had problems with heat haze at Frankfurt am Main Airport. I was arround with plane spotters for one and a half year and we also photographed aircrafts on the runways and taxiways. Sometimes the heat haze could be seen with the naked eye. Certainly I have had problems in countries like Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand and so on. But not on the beach or over the sea. Maybe because it's always a bit windy there. I have also heard from proffesional photographers or seen on RU-vid that under certain conditions there can be a build-up of heat in front of the front lens due to the lens hood. But I never consciously noticed that. Anayway - I’m happy to see again that the RF 200-800 mm is a good lens with a good Price-performance ratio. Regards Uwe

I live in Emerald Central Queensland and heat haze is an issue fairly often especially if the bird is a far distance away. Though I do find even in 40 degree days that I can get sharp shots of Fairywrens and Golden-headed Cisticolas in long grass of about a foot or more high. I find it's more open areas with bare ground that's more the issue. I'm looking forward to your review Duade and thank you for sharing your experience with heat haze. It will definitely make more people aware of it.

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!

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.

I feel your frustration man. It's something I've talked about in almost every wildlife video I make. Physics is Not your friend, lol. And I've been a physicist for over 20 years now. The more atmosphere you shoot through, the worse your image quality will degrade. Heat haze/atmospheric distortion can happen anywhere, anytime, at any temp, and any elevation if the conditions are right and it will absolutely wreck your images no matter how fancy your gear.

Great video, Duade. Last fall (northern hemisphere), I would regularly go to a sunflower field at sunrise to photograph northern harriers hunting. A couple of hours after sunrise, flocks of small songbirds would descend upon the field to dine on any remaining sunflower seeds. If the harriers were hunting elsewhere, I'd photograph the songbirds. But there were several mornings when the heat differential between the ground and the air was enough make the air at ground level unstable. If the songbirds were any more distant than 3-4 meters, I couldn't get sharp images shooting through the disturbed air. If there's no wind to help carry away the ground-level heat and equalize the temperature differential, it can be especially bad.

That explains a lot. Here in northern USA I shoot often (in the winter) from my car. My R10 and RF600 almost always is soft. I switch to my Sigma 150-600 and problem goes away. I never really thought about the heat from the car causing the problem. In the summer, regardless of where I shoot, the R10 and RF600 combo works very well. Thanks Duade!

Duade, I had a situation like this recently in Kentucky, U.S. I was sitting near my bird/wildlife garden pond on a very cold winter day photographing birds coming in to the water. Air temperature was 7º F, or -14º C. The little pond has a heater in it that keeps the temperature around 34º F (~1º C) to prevent it from freezing over. I got some crazy heat haze on every single photo I tried to take of birds visiting the pond. Like you, I had always thought it would happen in the summer, but this time it happened on a very cold winter day!

Doing quite a bit of aviation photography in the, this is a massive issue when shooting planes on the ground. Runways are notorious for getting hot very quickly and with jet exhausts, etc the whole thing can quickly turn into a hazy nightmare.

Hi Duade, this is so correct, I had an experience in the high arctic photographing polar bears, or "not". I was using a canon 500mm f4 + 1.4 extender at F5.6, with good shutter speed and low Iso, the bear was a good distance away and all my shots were as blurred as yours, I realised it was also heat haze but did not expect this in the arctic mid summer at 4 degrees C, but I guess the compression of a high magnification amplifies the distortion.

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 see the exact same thing in opposite weather conditions. Here along the U.S/Canada border we're in the middle of winter. Most of the lakes and ponds are frozen, but the larger, deeper lakes still have open water with lots of ducks. But when the water temperature is 0C/32F and the air temperature is -15C/5F, it produces an annoying amount of "heat" haze. It's funny to talk about heat haze when the landscape is covered in snow and ice, but it happens for the same reason as in summer!

I have taken a lot of images in Spain, usually in March or October, a lot of birds looked brilliant using a 400mm f2.8, only reviewing them was disappointing, I realised this was heat haze, with 5D3 optical viewfinder it was not obvious. I often have trouble focussing, even with R5 on dull days, similar to what you were getting, especially small birds, I take this to be lack of contrast.. Love the videos, have just ordered the 200-800, mainly so I have an RF mount long lens for quicker focussing and better IQ than my 100-400Lii with a 2x, I hope I will not be disappointed!

Duade you can relate to this but heat haze is not typically an issue for NZ. More so for you in Aus. Certainly raises a great issue regarding atmospheric conditions and how this can impact the sharpness of results. Loved you moonscape Duade, so much definition! The land of birds never disappoints though and those white Corellas inflight were gorgeous and so too the swamphen. Thanks again mate and your review is keenly awaited!