Images shot in the fog -- is there a way to do it?

My camera right now is a Canon PowerShot S5IS. There may not be a way to do it with my camera, but I'm wondering about that and about with better equipment, too. This was an effort this morning at 1/5, f/7.1 and ISO 80. A lot of noise removal was necessary. I also enhanced the contrast. Is there a way to get a well-defined bird in the fog? Thank you very much for any input. Oh, he's standing on an non-functioning aerator in the pond, which I know is not optimal for a nature image.

Barbara,

I like the fog around the heron in your image but the bird appears soft and I believe that is mostly due to the very low ISO and extremely slow shutter speed. I would have bumped up the ISO to help with that. Exposure in the fog is tricky but it can be done.Since this heron appears to have been stationary you could have tried using different exposure compensations to find the best exposure for this shot. The brightness of the aerator combined with the fog would make this a tricky exposure. A lower angle may have helped with the brightness some on the aerator. I have several images in my gallery where they were taken in the fog. You can check out the settings I used on those images on the posts. Some very moody and dramatic images can be created in the fog.

Barbara,

If the bird, animal or other subject is actually inside or behind the fog rather than in front of it you are never going to get crisp, sharp small details simply because there are millions of little water droplets between the camera lens and the subject. I personally love foggy photos because of the mysterious, veiled atmosphere. When you crank up the contrast to emphasize detail you actually defeat that atmosphere and you'll only emphasize the large lines and shapes anyway. The best choice, in my opinion, is to roll with the fog and use it in your composition to emphasize the softness and mood rather than try to defeat it. I would be interested in seeing your original photo before you tried to enhance it.

I like it!

Thanks, everyone. Gary, I didn't think these would work at all, so I just saved over it, but here is another one like it. I have a dozen or so, a few with a fish, a few getting the fish (but the head was flashing down into the water to get the fish, so the head is all movement), a few leaning way down before getting the fish. But here's another one like the one I posted. I didn't even clean up the noise since you wanted to see the original. Cindy, there's no crop in this one either. Thank you.

Hi Barbara. Your picture works fairly well because it shows that your fog is patchy. It might have been better if you had zoomed back a bit to show more of the surroundings - or not.

In my experience getting better gear isn't going to help get better fog pictures more than the extent to which it helps you get better pictures in general. Fog is highly variable. It looks like what you have here is ground fog. I love ground fog because it can create a layered effect in landscape pictures, and things rise above it so that their lower parts are hazy but their upper parts are clear, trees, buildings, boats, etc. Regular fog, as opposed to ground fog varies very much in it's density, so sometimes it's better than other times. Also, It can change fairly quickly.

Fog obscures far objects more than near objects. You can create nice effects if you have a scene that recedes into the fog, that is, you can get the near objects clear and objects in the scene grow hazier as they get farther from you. A longer lens will increase the effect of the fog for objects that are farther from you. If they fog is heavy, your subject will be low contrast with soft details and my not be particularly pleasing without a large context to show the fog.

As a general rule, a normal or wide lens is more effective in moderate to heavy fog, because it shows the fog effect near and far. Wide to normal lenses also will show off ground fog.

Large wading birds in fog may be best displayed as part of a scene that disappears into the fog, rather than as a frame-filling subject. I posted an example - not a great picture, but it illustrates the effect.

Buck, I like that image a lot, and it perfectly illustrates what you said in the first sentence in your last paragraph. Thank you!

By its nature fog greatly reduces contrast and detail, and it is exactly that aspect that makes me take photos in fog whenever possible (which is rarely here in dry AZ). I can't imagine defeating that by pumping up the contrast in post processing.

Here's a pair of Great Egrets from a rare fog event in Phoenix.

I had similar problems shooting trumpeter swans on the Mississippi (ice fog) last winter. This was done using spot focus & metering, mild ISO boost.

The untouched version is very good, Barbara! The only thing I would do on that one would be brighten the whole thing up a bit and crop off the bottom and right side to follow the rule of thirds with the bird in the lower right third. You can clearly see the fog in front of and around the bird and that tells the whole story and sets the mood of the scene. In my opinion, having more background helps also because it becomes all about a bird in it's environment instead of just about a bird.

I've added a post with more examples on my blog.