Atmospheric Distortion?

Neon Birding wrote:

Quesions for the long lens super telephoto wildlife shooters who do video and photo.

How do you deal with the various elements that cause the Atmospheric Distortion on videos and photos? And are their ways to deal with it? And what are the best way's to deal with it while recording/capture?

Thanks in advance.

I think other than picking a time with less turbulence (early morning) & reducing the amount of atmosphere you're shooting through, there's very little that can be done. With the moon at least you can take multiple shots & pick the results where distortion is least - this rarely works well for wildlife!

Neon Birding wrote:

Quesions for the long lens super telephoto wildlife shooters who do video and photo.

How do you deal with the various elements that cause the Atmospheric Distortion on videos and photos? And are their ways to deal with it? And what are the best way's to deal with it while recording/capture?

Well, for long exposure sequences with telescopes there are methods that essentially use a laser to estimate the atmospheric distortion and then map it out much like lens distortions. However, I've never heard of anybody trying to do that with a single shot. If there was geometric content in the image, you might be able to estimate a distortion function and hence its inverse, but for wildlife? I think it's probably unavoidable.

Just try to shoot under conditions where the air isn't distorting things too much, e.g., no heat waves, low humidity, no serious pressure gradients, and not-too-much atmosphere between you and your subject.