Dealing with haze when using telephoto lenses
March 17, 2011 3 Comments
When shooting landscape pictures with telephoto lenses, you will sometime see that the colors are influenced by haze. It is not just a question of having the right White Balance. It also has to do with the fact that when an object is viewed over a long distance, it will be viewed through lots of air which in itself adds color to the object.
Sometimes, this colored haze just adds the right look and feel to the image but at other times it may just be an unwanted distraction to the landscape.
Capture One Pro’s levels adjustments tool for individual color channels is the perfect tool to deal with such haze problems.
Use individual levels adjustments
The image on the left shows some typical long distance haze which makes the colors look a little washed out with a distinct bluish cast. The image on the right has been corrected with individual Levels Tools for each color channel. Not only has the bluish cast disappeared, but the blue sky and the green color of the mountain slopes now appear much more natural.
When looking at the uncorrected RAW image from the above example in the Levels Tool, you will notice that the histogram doesn’t start at 0 and that the R, G and B histograms start at quite different levels. This is a sure sign of haze.
To compensate for the haze effect, open the Levels Tool for the individual color channels, and set the shadow sliders at the beginning of each histogram and the highlight sliders at the end. Only an individual Levels Tool can correct for this type of haze.
Thank you – nice example.
I have found that aerial photography also has a haze problem. During a shoot a couple of years ago covering many sites I discovered that the settings in C1 that I used to correct saturation and contrast increased with height. The higher I went the more correction I needed obviously. I am sure that if I had a record of the plane’s altitude it could be shown from the C1 sliders!
Invaluable post for aerial photographers. One question. How do you separate the three channel displays into separate windows, as you have there? It would save me a lot of time when adjusting aerial shots to be able to see the three channels apart like that.