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Atmospheric Distortion
One of the things that I run in to regularely while practicing long lens photography, is dealing with atmospheric distortion.
The above photo is an example of the atmospheric distortion that I was dealing with on this morning just after sunrise, shooting with a 500 mm lens and a 1.4 extender creating a 700 mm lens. The lens/camera combination was mounted on a solidly positioned carbon-fiber tripod with a 16 pound sandbag hanging beneath the center of the tripod.
When shooting with poor atmospheric conditions that include heat waves rising, long telephoto lenses will optically compress the warping effect resulting in soft images and inaccurate autofocus, something to be aware of.
Over the years, I have found that the higher the quality of the lens, the less distortion to some degree, although I find that shooting across or over sand, concrete, rocks, water, snow and open fields when the air to ground temperature differential is more than 10 degrees or so will result in some distortion.
Shooting in bright sunlight over these same grounds will produce distortion as well. If the air contains pollutants, whether it be smoke from forest fires or otherwise will also cause distortion. I find that the higher above the ground an object being photographed is, the less the distortion from heat rising.
In the case of these wind turbines facing off with the Rockies, the wind spinning the blades was also creating a turbulence causing the distortion to be more pronounced.
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