High temp problem with equipment

[pedro06]

Hi all
First post after many many hours of research on this excellent forum.
Consider myself very average photographer and totally useless on post processing (so much to learn)
Went to last two Avalon airshows. 2017 did well with now retired 300D and kit 55-200 lens so was expecting to improve considerably with new 80D and new Tamron 100-400 in 2019.
In 2019 temp was about 45 in the shade so out in open who knows. Most action shots were out of focus even after trying several different settings from auto to various "creative" settings in camera and Tv of course. Shame as F35 and F22 were exceptional.
Gear works well at "normal" Queensland temps.
So the question is...what is considered max temp the current generation of computers in a camera will handle.
Canon and Tamron suggest about 40 but are a bit vague.

[ricktas]

It depends.

I know that sounds vague, but it is correct. Remember that official temperatures are taken at stations around the country and in the shade. So the reported temperature for a town/suburb/city can be not what the temperature is at any other specific location. Also as the official temperature is taken in the shade, any bit of direct sun exposure can have a dramatic impact on the actual temperature that your gear is exposed to.

Same thing happens when you go the other way. Go to Antarctica and one of the first thing you will notice is batteries no longer stay charged. As batteries get colder they do not provide enough power to run cameras. Which is why when you go somewhere like that, the standard operating procedure is to place your charged batteries under your clothing, close to your skin, and take them out, put them in the camera when needed only.

Extremes of temperature, either way, can seriously impact your gears functionality.

[arthurking83]

Don't be surprised that you may have been the limitation at those temps.
Doesn't take much, and I doubt you would know about it.

But in saying that too, the accepted wisdom is that lenses do (or can) suffer from heat and have performance issues with focusing.

Canon have their famous white lenses, and it's commonly accepted that they're white to alleviate heat buildup.

Lenses have this built in feature that takes heat into consideration.
They can focus past infinity. That is they could theoretically focus to a point beyond the known universe!
But that's not what it means.
The ability to focus past infinity, that's the ∞ thing on your lens, is simply there to account for variations in ambient temps.

[Mark L]

Most action shots were out of focus even after trying several different settings from auto to various "creative" settings in camera and Tv of course. Shame as F35 and F22 were exceptional.

Seems like it was you getting used to using new gear and not a temp related thing I'd think.

[Glenda]

You'd probably get more helpful information if you posted the actual photos with exif date ie aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Maybe you didn't have a fast enough shutter speed for your lens length, maybe you missed focus on the subject etc.

[pedro06]

You'd probably get more helpful information if you posted the actual photos with exif date ie aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Maybe you didn't have a fast enough shutter speed for your lens length, maybe you missed focus on the subject etc.

Hi Glenda
No maybe about missed focus. I have deleted most of the high speed photos in disgust but even the stills were dodgy.
Since then at normal temperatures, no problem even some low flying lorikeets in last few days which are hard to track at about 20-30ft and 30klm per hr.
Thanks for your imput.

[arthurking83]

Hey Pedro, what focus mode did you use for each respective shoot?

Do you use manual point selection, full auto, single shot with beep confirmation, or continuous focus tracking mode?

As for having deleted images, did you Shift Del(ie. obliterate) them , or just delete them the normal manner(ie. they could still be either in the recycle bin, or retrievable via a recovery program).

Not sure on your computer experience level, but when you delete something(even shift delete), it doesn't actually delete the file, it removes the listing of it's location in the internal catalogue of where files bits are stored.
So there could be a possibility that if you deleted (say) 200 images, that some may be still retrievable.

If you could post up just one of the missed focus images with full exif, the full exif data will reveal all sorts of handy camera settings you had used at the time.

I personally can't see how 45°C ambients would create such a variance in focus ability on a lens .. noting that thee are hotter parts of the world and cameras and lenses still operate with reliability.
As a slight aside, I've shot in roughly 45°C ambients, but not with any humidity tho, always very dry central Aus locations. Not that I've specifically searched for it, but never seen any focusing issues in those images due to ambient conditions.
I have missed shots, of course as you may sometimes experience, but not a wholesale ruining of a particular series, en mass.

[Brigitte]

Just a stab in the dark but could it have been heat haze that caused the problem. Just recently came across this video with regards to heat haze causing problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrZk6q4mjzg