It's hard to get a good sharp focus...

[AlwaysOnAuto]

with all the heat waves coming off the sand today.

[Shadowman]

Those waves are the best part of the scene. Nice composition.

[bnnrcn]

Nice image Alan I would crop about 1/3 of the sand if the image was mine .

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Today's beach shot is even better as you can see the island today.

[Manfred M]

Your first image is quite badly underexposed. All that sky and bright sand fooled your camera's light meter. I would suggest that you need at least a stop or even two of exposure compensation. I would have to say the same about the second one as well, but less so than the first image.

[tao2]

Hi Alan,

a Haze 2a filter and a slower shutter speed for the first image, though ah quite like the effect , as is. What's the exposure settings?

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Boab - 1/2000 at probably f8 or so, not sure as it doesn't get recorded in the camera or by me. That is a cropped photo too, just so that's known.

Manfred - What you see is actually pretty much what it was like out there yesterday. I'll give the exposure a try in my software though and see what it looks like opened up one stop.

[Mike Buckley]

Alan,

Nice heat waves! Very effective. When I see heat waves in an image, I want the image to be captured at an exposure and post-processed in a style that makes the scene appear as if the temperature is hot. Following Manfred's suggestion would make that happen for me.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Manfred - I put in a stop's worth of compensation, or what I think is a stop's worth, and the picture just doesn't look like it should to me. Maybe I don't know what a 'proper' exposure is supposed to look like. I thought my image was a pretty good representation of what I saw when I took the picture yesterday, and for that matter today's shot does too. There was a big difference, day to day, with how the sun looked. Yesterday was quite hazy as you couldn't see the island and the sun was trying it's best to get thru that haze. Today it didn't have a problem and you could see the island too, since we're in a slight Santa Ana wind condition which blows out all the smog so the islanders can enjoy some of it too.

[madcrow]

Nice images.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Mike - Yesterday was hot with haze. Today was hot with no haze. The first picture was taken with my Nex-7 and a Minolta 58mm f1.4 lens. Today's shot was with an A7ii and a Micro Nikkor 55mm f2.8. That could have something to do with the differences in how the pictures look too. First shot is heavily cropped. Second is pretty much straight out of the camera via Tinypics resizing.

[rpcrowe]

For non-Californians, the hazy smog out in the ocaen is a result of Santa Ana Wind Conditions when the winds blow from the east (desert) out across the coast onto the Pacific Ocean, carrying smog and other trashy air with them... These Santa Ana conditions are responsible (or at least greatly contribute to) many of our wild fires. The humidity becomes very low and often the heat builds up.

A haze 2A filter works quite well when you are shooting film but, doesn't contribute greatly to improving digital imagery. What will often help partially cut through the smog is the use of a circular polarizing filter. The CPL will, often cut down the reflections from the particulates in the air. The amount of reflection control, depends on the direction of the sun.