RSS
 

Posts Tagged ‘foggy’

6 Tips for Avoiding a Foggy Lens

23 Aug

The post 6 Tips for Avoiding a Foggy Lens appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jim Hamel.

6 tips for avoiding a foggy lens

Has this ever happened to you?

  1. You are on vacation at the beach. You decide to photograph the sunrise or sunset, so you grab your camera from your hotel room and head out. You get to the perfect spot and look through the viewfinder at the beautiful sunrise/sunset – only to find that your lens is completely fogged over. You wipe away the condensation from the front of the lens, but it instantly comes right back. Over and over again.
  2. You’re in your car, and you spot something you want to photograph. You pull over, hop out, and set up the shot – only to find that the lens is fogged over, and every time you wipe it away, the fog comes right back. You miss the shot.

In coastal and tropical environments, lens fog happens all the time. Transferring your camera and lens from a cool, low-humidity location like your car or hotel room to a warmer, high-humidity environment causes condensation to form on the lens – which, in turn, causes you to miss photos (and can increase lens issues down the road).

Plus, humid environments are where most folks go on vacation/holiday, and therefore where they tend to take the most pictures. Meaning that the foggy lens problem ruins a lot of shots.

So what do you do? How do you keep a camera from fogging up? And once it’s happened, how do you deal with the condensation? Is there any way to defog a lens?

Read on to find out.

Dealing with a foggy lens

So how do you fix this problem?

Well, I have bad news:

Once your lens is foggy, there’s not a quick and easy fix. There are a few things you can try, which will be addressed at the end of the article, but you just have to keep wiping off your lens and waiting for it to acclimate. This can take a while. Sometimes it just takes a few minutes for the lens to acclimate and stop fogging over, but other times it can take half an hour.

a clear shot of palm trees taken once the lens was clean
Taken at sunrise in the Florida Keys. Although this shot turned out okay, check out the photos below, which were taken minutes before with a foggy lens. I’m lucky I didn’t miss the sunrise entirely.
foggy Florida sunrise
Here is a similar shot to the one above, but this one was taken before the lens had a chance to acclimate to the warm, humid air outside my hotel.

So: since there’s no on-the-spot fix, you have to avoid the problem in the first place – by letting your camera and lens acclimate ahead of time.

Obviously, you cannot just leave your camera bag lying around outside. You will need to let everything acclimate safely. Here are some tips for preventing a foggy lens while keeping your camera gear safe:

1. Leave the camera outside (but in a safe place)

If you have a secure hotel balcony, you might put your camera and lens outside to let them acclimate. You probably don’t want to leave gear out overnight, though. Security concerns aside, the coastal environment is not friendly to electronics, and prolonged exposure isn’t great for your camera. You can, however, place the camera and lens out on the balcony or other secure place while you prepare to go out. (Leaving them outside for 30 minutes or so ought to be sufficient.)

If you are getting up early to shoot a sunrise, for example, you might place your camera and primary lens outside immediately after you wake up, and let them acclimate while you are getting ready to go. That will give them some time to fog up and defog before you need to shoot.

(Also, once you’re ready to go, place your camera and lens in your camera bag while still outside, zip it up, then bring it in. You don’t want to reverse all your acclimation work by causing your equipment to cool down all over again!)

2. Keep the camera in the trunk

When you are driving around or headed to your photo shoot location, keep your camera and lenses in the trunk of your car. That way, they avoid the air conditioning and can acclimate to the outside temperature and humidity.

Sometimes, however, you want to keep your camera handy (just in case you come across a great shot). If that’s the case, turn the AC off and roll down the windows. This will keep your camera and lens out of the air conditioning so they acclimate to the temperature and humidity outside, while ensuring you can still grab a shot or two if need be.

3. Get your equipment out of the bag

If you leave your camera and lens in a zipped-up camera bag, the acclimation process will take far longer. A camera bag, while certainly not airtight, will prevent airflow and keep your camera and lens surrounded by cool, dry air – which will cause condensation the moment you open your gear up to the surroundings.

Instead, when you are acclimatizing the camera and lens – whether that be on the hotel balcony, in the trunk of your car, or some other place – keep them outside the camera bag.

foggy bridge photography
Here is another shot taken immediately upon exiting my cool, dry hotel and entering the warm, humid air in the Florida Keys.

4. Remove the caps and filters

The front of your lens likely has the biggest problem with condensation, so that’s the part you should spend the most time and effort acclimating.

While there aren’t many ways to focus acclimation on a specific lens element, you can take off any filters or lens caps. You don’t want an ND filter or a lens cap keeping the warm air from equalizing the temperatures. Because as soon as you take either of these elements off to shoot, the warm air will rush in – and the fogging will occur.

5. Keep a microfiber cloth handy

Once the condensation happens, you just have to ride it out until your camera and lens acclimate. At the same time, you should periodically wipe off the front of the lens. That way, you can see if the condensation is going to return, and whether you can start shooting. If you are not wiping the lens off periodically, you just won’t know.

In addition, if the fogging isn’t too severe, you can wipe off the lens and then quickly snap a shot or two before the lens starts fogging up again. That usually works after the acclimation process has been going on for a while.

So keep a microfiber cloth handy for this reason. If you don’t have one, you can use whatever is available to wipe off your lens, like your shirt (I’d like to scoff at the idea, but I’ve been forced to wipe lenses with my shirt many times).

Before your outing, buy a couple of clip-on microfiber cloths that come in little pouches. You can just clip one to your camera strap and you’ll always have it handy. This will also keep you from having to dig through your bag to find your cloth (because they always head to the bottom in a hard-to-reach corner!).

6. Fix it in post-production

A picture with any significant fogginess due to condensation is a goner. You will not be able to save it.

But if the picture only has a minor amount of fogginess, you can try to clear it up. There are no surefire cures, but my suggestions below will help in some cases.

Your first thought should probably be to increase the contrast and clarity in Lightroom or ACR. That will work a little bit, but a slightly stronger move is to take the photo into the LAB color space and perform a basic LAB color enhancement. A fortunate side-effect of the color enhancement is that you’ll remove haze from the picture.

Again, neither tactic is a magic wand, but they can help.

bright sunrise with dock and palm trees
To conclude on a positive note, here is a shot taken the same morning as the fogged picture above. The lens cleared in time to capture a great sunrise. Yet another reason to get there early!

Avoiding a foggy lens: final words

Condensation is definitely a trap for the unwary. Light conditions change fast. Optimal conditions at sunrise and sunset are fleeting. You don’t want to be standing around waiting for the condensation on your lens to disappear!

So take steps to avoid the problem. Acclimate your camera and lens ahead of time, then make sure you are wiping off the front of your lens periodically. It will keep you from missing shots when the light is optimal!

Now over to you:

Do you have any advice for dealing with camera and lens condensation? Any defogging tips or tricks? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

person holding up a lens and looking through the center

The post 6 Tips for Avoiding a Foggy Lens appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jim Hamel.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on 6 Tips for Avoiding a Foggy Lens

Posted in Photography

 

Foggy Morning on the South Platte River below Denver

11 Oct

Recently, I photographed several water diversion dams on the Poudre and South Platte Rivers. The most rewarding experience was a foggy morning on the South Platte just downstream of the 104th Street (Elaine T. Valente Open Space). See pictures below. […]
paddling with a camera

 
Comments Off on Foggy Morning on the South Platte River below Denver

Posted in Photography

 

Tips for How to Enhance the Mood in Your Foggy Photos

17 Mar

I love photographs of foggy scenes. It can be a view of a busy street, a sprawling city skyline or a secluded mountain valley. Mist and fog are transformative and can give a well-known location a completely different feeling, filled with mystery and depth.

How to Control Mood in Your Foggy Photos

There are so many things you can do with your foggy images to give them the kind of mood and feel you want.

In this article, I’m going to choose an image that features fog and edit it a few different ways. I’ll show you a few simple factors that you can put to use to help you learn to completely control the mood of your misty and foggy images.

The Photo

This is the photograph that was kind enough to lend itself to be a guinea pig for our little experiments.

foggy image of a tree - How to Control Mood in Your Foggy Photos

It’s an image I made early one morning in the mountains of Virginia and of course, it is a RAW file…for now. Below we’re going to look at how some easy changes can literally transform this photo.

Contrast

We all know about contrast to some extent. At its core, contrast is simply the difference between light and dark in an image. When there’s a big difference and the lights are bright and the shadows are dark the photo is said to be high contrast. The opposite is true with low contrast photos where there is a very little gradient between the lights and darks.

The reason I’m refreshing you with a little Photography 101 is that fog inherently makes most images low contrast. You can choose to further reduce the contrast or bump things up as I’ve done in our first example.

Here’s our test photo with a large amount of increased contrast (using the Contrast and Blacks sliders) applied.

How to Control Mood in Your Foggy Photos - higher contrast tree image

A relatively large amount of contrast in a misty scene instantly changes the tone of the photo by adding a sense of brooding. The light areas become brighter and the shadows deepen. High contrast images, in general, have more impact but that’s more of a preference than a rule.

Alternatively, you can choose to embrace the softness of foggy images and decrease the contrast even more. Now I’ve lessened the contrast using the Tone Curve to fade out the tree.

How to Control Mood in Your Foggy Photos - lower contrast tree image

Low contrast can make your image extremely delicate which imparts an artsy, nearly abstract vibe. Oddly enough, low contrast foggy photos can be surprisingly workable in black and white as well.

How to Control Mood in Your Foggy Photos - b/w tree

Color Temperature

Believe it or not, color temperature has one of the most perceivable impacts on photos of fog and mist. Perhaps even more so than anything the feel of the photograph and how it conveys mood is determined by the temperature of the color tones.

Now I’m going to take that high contrast version of the photo from the last example and change nothing but the color temperature. The version is nice and soothing cooled down. I adjusted the White Balance from 6150K to 4350K.

How to Control Mood in Your Foggy Photos - cool image of a tree

Next, let’s warm the color temperature back up considerably from the base 6150K to 7350K

How to Control Mood in Your Foggy Photos - warmer image of a tree

See what a difference that makes? Misty and foggy images with a cooler color temperature are more ethereal and give the viewer a more ominous, darker experience. On the flip side of the temperature coin, warmer toned images are generally viewed as more upbeat and comforting.

It’s funny how changing the color temperature can have such a drastic effect on identical scenes.

Brightness

The overall all brightness of a photo is very subjective but when it comes to foggy photos there’s a very particular change you can make to your photo to take it from mundane to wow. “Wowdane” maybe? You know what I mean.

You accomplish this by making use of your old friend in Lightroom, the Graduated Filter. I’m going to use the cool toned image from the last example but the only change I’ll make is to add some increased exposure in the top portion of the photo.

How to Control Mood in Your Foggy Photos - darker

By brightening up the fog in the tree top the entire photo becomes more impactful and punchy. The fog seems to “glow” and becomes more like something out of the pages of a storybook.

Experiment with your photo by moving the Graduated Filter around to add directional lighting or even opting for the Radial Filter to localize the effect even more. I use a Graduated or Radial Filters (or both) in virtually all of my landscape and nature photos and it becomes especially useful in those which feature fog or mist.

Embracing the Haze

Some final thoughts on working with images of mist and fog include using the suggestions above, but I also encourage you to revisit the same image more than once while editing. Look for ways to change the mood and tone of the photo by changing the color temperatures. Don’t be afraid to go to extremes with contrast.

The great thing about working with these types of scenes is that they offer incredible creative opportunities for both you and the viewer.

The post Tips for How to Enhance the Mood in Your Foggy Photos by Adam Welch appeared first on Digital Photography School.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on Tips for How to Enhance the Mood in Your Foggy Photos

Posted in Photography

 

How to Make Use of Foggy Surfaces for Abstract Photography

12 Feb

When I mention that one of my favorite subjects to photograph is foggy surfaces, I get a few weird looks. To the uninitiated, the subject is an unusual one and most likely a boring one too. Photographers in-the-know furrow their brow, recalling the dreaded lens fog plaguing important shoot days and holidays photos.

Nevertheless, diffused glass is a beautiful and extremely diverse tool, great for adding an atmospheric layer to any image.

How to Make Use of Foggy Surfaces in Photography

How to Make Use of Foggy Surfaces in Photography

What is a foggy surface?

First of all, “foggy surfaces” (or fogged) is a term I use to encompass a whole wealth of surfaces that render softly focused images. Office partitions, shower doors, windows – there are hundreds of different sources of glass diffused organically by weather or intentionally by the manufacturer.

Frosted glass is an artificially diffused surface material. Created by sandblasting annealed glass, frosted glass is used to separate environments without sacrificing light. It suggests a sense of openness without sacrificing privacy. These surfaces diffuse and soften subjects to create dense, otherworldly subject matter that investigates form as much as they obscure.

How to Make Use of Foggy Surfaces in Photography

Due to scratches and reflections, this image has an extra layer of depth.

Where to find fogged surfaces

A great source of fogged glass is through your everyday exterior office window. Decorative or plain sheets of frosted glass are used as partitions, making use of natural light. Photographing objects through these types of glass creates beautiful, isolated studies of subjects matter.

Plant leaves pressed against the glass plays with light and form, unusual office chairs take on a new life framed by a foggy canvas. It’s amazing how little it takes to re-imagine form in a whole new way with something as simple as a thin layer of glass.

One of my favorite times for taking photographs is on a rainy day. The heavy atmosphere, the movement, the transformation of color and light – it’s all enticing to me and nothing illustrates this more than the view through a damp, slowly fogging window.

On a cold and wet day, warmer moisture in the air turns into condensation upon contact with cold air. Inside a vehicle, warm air brushes against the coldness of a window and this begin to collect as condensation on the glass. This fogs the window and the pane of glass frames and reflects the environment while housing the subject itself beyond the glass. It’s a bit of a mixture of art and science, and the results are really beautiful if you’re willing to brave the wet conditions.

How to Make Use of Foggy Surfaces in Photography

This photograph was taken through a tram window on a cold and rainy night. Commuter’s coats and the lights in the tram create a surreal landscape of color.

The bad type of fog

Seeking out subjects in the rain as can also lead to “camera fog”. This is a type of fog you want to avoid. Transferring a camera from a warmer environment to a cooler one causes condensation inside the camera too. While a few rounds of camera fog won’t destroy a camera, taking steps to acclimatize your camera will prevent extra wear.

Before heading out for a rainy day photography walk, minimize the issue by putting your camera inside a plastic zip-lock bag until the temperature inside the bag and out have equalized. Depending on the difference in temperatures, you may need to leave your gear in the bag for a few hours to acclimatize. While it’s a bit of a pain, but it’s better to keep the fog outside of the camera!

How to Make Use of Foggy Surfaces in Photography

Fogged glass can create beautiful abstract effects.

How to Make Use of Foggy Surfaces in Photography

Photographing fogged surfaces rely on the light coming through the glass. Different times of the day can render completely different results.

How to photograph fogged surfaces

Photographing fogged surfaces is very similar to photographing transparent surfaces like glass. The strength of the light behind the subject will dictate how your subject will look. As you probably don’t have an opportunity to adjust the backlight, try taking photographs of subjects at different times of the day. The morning may depict an office plant in detail, but the light in the evening will lend more of a silhouette effect.

The result of an image taken through fogged glass also relies heavily on the proximity the subject to the glass itself. However, most subjects will be tucked behind a window or a building security system. Like street photography, this means that you’ll have to make the most of what you have.

From the exterior, closer objects, or even objects leaning against the glass will be the sharpest subjects. Distant subjects like faraway light sources are dispersed into the cloudy shades of the surface. It’s like having your focusing done for you. Try a few different angles and change your distance in relation to the subject.

Try to focus on detail rather than quantity, that way you will have a frame full of information rather than an empty frame of a faraway scene. If possible, try setting up a tripod so you’ll be able to use slower shutter speeds to capture the image. This isn’t ideal in every circumstance, however.

The post How to Make Use of Foggy Surfaces for Abstract Photography by Megan Kennedy appeared first on Digital Photography School.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on How to Make Use of Foggy Surfaces for Abstract Photography

Posted in Photography

 

Tips for Avoiding a Foggy Lens

20 Aug
Foggy lens article - example of clear shot taken once lens cleared

Taken at sunrise in the Florida Keys. Although this shot was okay, see below to see the similar shot taken a few minutes before with a foggy lens. I’m lucky I didn’t miss it entirely.

Has this happened to you?

  • You are on vacation at the beach. You decide to photograph the sunrise or sunset, so you grab your camera from your hotel room and head out. You get to the perfect spot to shoot, and look through the viewfinder at the beautiful sunrise/sunset – only to find that the lens is completely fogged over. You wipe away the condensation from the front of the lens, but it instantly comes right back. Every time.
  • Or perhaps you’re in your car, and you spot something you want to photograph. You pull over, hop out and set up the shot – only to find the same thing. The lens is fogged over, and every time you wipe it away, it comes right back. You miss the shot.

This happens all the time in coastal and tropical environments. Transferring the camera and lens from a cool, low-humidity location like your car or hotel room directly into a warmer, high-humidity environment causes condensation to form on the lens (on the front and back elements).

Making the problem even worse is that these humid environments are likely where you like to go on vacation/holiday, and that is when you tend to take the most pictures. So that means this problem ruins a lot of shots. It has happened to me many, many times.

Dealing with a Foggy Lens

So how do you fix this problem? Well, once it happens, there is no fix. There are a few things you can try, which will be addressed at the end of the article, but you just have to keep wiping off your lens, and waiting for it to acclimate. This can take a while. Sometimes it just takes a few minutes for the lens to acclimatize and stop fogging over, but other times it can take half an hour.

Example of picture taken with lens fogged due to condensation

Here is a similar shot to the one above, but this one was taken before the lens had a chance to acclimate to the warm, humid air outside my hotel.

Since you cannot fix it once it happens, you have to avoid the problem in the first place. How do you do that? You have to let your camera or lens acclimate ahead of time.

Obviously, you cannot just leave your camera bag laying around outside. You will need to let everything acclimate while keeping it safe. Here are some tips for decreasing the time necessary for your camera and lens to acclimate to the outside temperature and humidity while keeping it safe:

1. Keep the camera outside (but in a safe place)

If you have a secure hotel balcony, you might put your camera and lens out there to let them acclimate. You probably don’t want to leave them out there overnight though. Even putting aside any security concerns, the coastal environment is not friendly to electronics, and prolonged exposure isn’t great for your camera. You can, however, place the camera and lens out on the balcony or other secure place for a while, as you are preparing to go out. Leaving them outside for a half-hour or so ought to be sufficient.

If you are getting up early to shoot a sunrise, for example, you might place your camera and primary lens out there immediately after you wake up, and let them acclimate while you are getting ready to go. That will give them some time to acclimate.

2. Keep the camera in the trunk

When you are driving around, or heading to a place you plan to photograph, keep your camera and lenses in the trunk of your car. That will keep them out of the air conditioning, and allow them to acclimate to the outside temperature and humidity.

Sometimes, however, you want to keep your camera handy in case you come across a great shot. In that case, keep the AC off and roll the windows down. All you are doing is keeping your camera and lens out of the air conditioning so that they acclimate to the temperature and humidity outside.

3. Get them out of the bag

If you leave your camera and lens in a zipped-up camera bag, then the acclimation process will take exponentially longer. The camera bag, while certainly not air-tight, will prevent air flow and keep your camera and lens surrounded by cool, dry air. You don’t want that.

Instead, when you are acclimatizing the camera and lens – whether that be on the hotel balcony, in the trunk of your car, or some other place – keep them outside the camera bag.

Example of picture taken with lens fogged due to condensation.

Here is another shot taken immediately upon exiting my cool, dry hotel and entering the warm, humid air along the coast in the Florida Keys.

4. Remove the caps and filters

The place where you are likely to have the biggest problem with condensation, is the front of your lens. Therefore, that is the part you should spend the most time and effort acclimating. In doing so, take off any filters or lens caps that are on your lenses. You don’t want a UV filter and a lens cap keeping the warmer, more humid air from getting to the front of your lens and acclimating it to the conditions outside.

5. Keep a micro-fibre cloth handy

Once the condensation happens, you just have to ride it out until your camera and lens acclimate. At the same time, you should periodically wipe off the front of the lens. That way you can see if the condensation is going to return. If you are not wiping it off periodically, you won’t know.

In addition, if the situation is not too severe, you can wipe off the lens and then quickly snap off a shot or two before the lens starts fogging up again. That usually works after the acclimation process has been going on for a while.

Keep a micro-fibre cloth handy for this process. If you don’t have one, you’re going to have to use whatever is available to wipe off your lens – like your shirt (and I’d like to scoff at this notion, but I’ve been forced to resort to that many times). Buy a couple of clip-on micro-fibre cloths that come in little pouches. You can just clip one to your camera strap and you’ll always have it handy. That will also keep you from having to dig through your bag to find one (they always go to the bottom in a hard-to-reach corner).

6. Fix it in post-production?

A picture with any significant fogginess due to condensation is a goner. You will not be able to save it.

If the picture only has a minor amount of fogginess, however, there are some things you can do to try to clear it up. These are by no means sure-fire cures, but they will help a minor case of fogginess. Your first thought will probably be to increase the contrast and clarity in Lightroom or ACR. Those will work a little bit. A slightly stronger move is to take the photo into the LAB colorspace and perform the basic LAB color enhancement move. A fortunate side-effect of the color enhancement move is to remove a haze from the picture. Again, none of these tactics is a magic wand, but they can help.

Foggy lens article - example of clear shot taken once the lens had acclimated

So as to conclude on a positive note, here is a shot taken the same morning as the fogged picture above. The lens cleared in time to capture a great sunrise. Yet another reason to get there early!

Conclusion

Condensation is definitely a trap for the unwary. Light conditions change fast. Optimal conditions at sunrise and sunset are fleeting. You don’t want to be standing around waiting for the condensation on your lens to disappear and miss a shot.

Take steps to avoid the problem and acclimate your camera and lens ahead of time, while at the same time keeping everything safe. Do this either ahead of time, or while you are en route. Then make sure you are wiping off the front of your lens periodically, it will keep you from missing shots when the light is optimal.

Editor’s Note: I have encountered this situation many times. In Bangkok however I found that the image I took with the fog (below) had more feeling and impact than the ones I took after it cleared. So don’t stop shooting, you never know what you’ll get!

Darlene Hildebrandt

By Darlene Hildebrandt

googletag.cmd.push(function() {
tablet_slots.push( googletag.defineSlot( “/1005424/_dPSv4_tab-all-article-bottom_(300×250)”, [300, 250], “pb-ad-78623” ).addService( googletag.pubads() ) ); } );

googletag.cmd.push(function() {
mobile_slots.push( googletag.defineSlot( “/1005424/_dPSv4_mob-all-article-bottom_(300×250)”, [300, 250], “pb-ad-78158” ).addService( googletag.pubads() ) ); } );

The post Tips for Avoiding a Foggy Lens by Jim Hamel appeared first on Digital Photography School.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on Tips for Avoiding a Foggy Lens

Posted in Photography

 

A foggy day (featuring Natalie Wall)

01 Feb

My first shoot with Natalie Wall was perfect. She sent me a message early one foggy morning and asked if I wanted to shoot in the fog… it was an …
Jake Garn Photography

 
Comments Off on A foggy day (featuring Natalie Wall)

Posted in Uncategorized