You can use some gels (colour filters) for correction, Here, from 2015, is a post with an example.
Take this: I am lit pretty much OK by my flash, and with the camera set to FLASH white balance,, but the background is a tungsten light, so it looks red. I happen to like that, but what if I want that background to look normal, white, the way it looks to me?
Well… can I not just set the white balance to Tungsten?
No, because then, while the background would look good, the parts lit by the flash would look all blue, like this:
Part 1 of the solution: make the light on me come from a tungsten light source too, so we both look red. We do this by adding a CTO (colour Temperature Orange) to the flash.
Part 2 of the solution: Now you can set the white balance on your camera to “Tungsten”, and both I and the background will look neutral:
Done. Now we both look normal.
So, in summary: when you are dealing with a colour-cast ambient light, gel your flash to that same colour cast, and then adjust your white balance setting to that colour cast.
A am sure you all know I have written series of bestselling photography learning books.
Well, now there’s a special discount on for this month. See https://michaelwillemsphoto.com/ebooks.html for the special – and at the bottom of the page, for four FREE downloads of excerpts from some of the books – excerpts of complete chapters that are useful all by themselves. Go download them now!
Of my seven books, the one you should read first if you are a beginner or intermediate user, is “Mastering Your Camera”. It starts from zero, and will make you a competent photographer technically, and it also starts you off in terms of composition and subject selection.
The FOURTH Edition of this e-book has just been released. It contains many corrections, some clarifications, a few new flowcharts and tables, and general updates. As before, it is a PDF that you can use on any device, and you can also print a copy for personal use. The new edition’s ISBN is 978-0-9950800-8-9.
And if you do not have it yet, I have some great news: for one week only, it is available forjust C$4.95. After that week, the price will revert to the usual $19.95.
Photos are the way we time-travel. And more and more people, fortunately, are discovering it. I do a lot of restoration and the subsequent printing and cropping.
Here I am doing the latter, cropping a just-printed photo, just now in the store:
Restoring old photos may involve a lot more than you perhaps imagine.
There’s the obvious (but not always easy) improving of contrast, colour, white balance, saturation, sharpness, shadow areas, and so on. And the time-consuming but very effective removal of specks, scratches, tears, fingerprints, and so on. It can easily take an hour per photo and involve literally hundreds of imperfections that one by one get removed.
But there’s also local adjustments. For example, often a photo is much better if the sky is slightly less white and more blue. And if we think the sky was actually blue at the time, we will bring some of that back.
Faces have often shifted colour, or lost colour, too – they need to be brought back to real skin tones, which is a tricky but essential local adjustment.
Then there’s removal of items. I remember a bride whose favourite picture was one of her and her new husband – but the photographer had taken it with the couple standing very close to a giant “STOP – NO ENTRY” sign. That was not what she wanted, for obvious reasons, so I removed it. And there was the Muslim bride photographed close to a prominent “Jesus Saves” sign – also removed!
Perspective fixes are also very important. Often, when a picture was taken the camera was pointed upward or downward. When this is distracting or when it leads to unacceptable distortion, I fix that too.
But there’s also artistic insight. What shadow would look best in this area of the image? What colour would work best here? And when we replace an area that is missing from a print, we often need to interpret what the person would have had in that part of the picture. Especially when it involved a photo made in, say, 1844, this means research.
And research comes in in other areas, too. For example, in this picture I spent a lot of time researching the exact colour of the copper roof in 1961. Copper changes colour constantly over the years, so it was important to get it right.
Uniforms too—which I see quite a lot of in the photos that people bring to me in Ottawa—need to be right, and it can be a challenge to find out exactly what this regiment’s daily uniform or or that police outfit’s mess dress uniform looked like in a given year in the past.
We use a variety of tools, from software like Photoshop and Lightroom, and specialized software that carries out math operations, to physically retouching with carefully chosen inks. For most restorations a combination fo at least a few of these is required for best results.
But in spite of all the work required, bringing a worn photo back to good quality is one of the most satisfying things I do. Because it really is a form of time travel: as I work, I imagine myself taking the picture, however many years ago it was. And the owner’s reaction, when they see the restored photo, is a reward in itself.
It looks like light at the end of the tunnel. Day 79 of the mall being closed, but it is re-opening at the end of this week. You can read all about it on this page. And: I look forward to seeing some of you in the store for your continued photo restoration, passport photos, prints, portraits, and more.
And today, another photo in my series of COVID-19 self portraits. Here it is, this morning:
Covid Day 9: The Photographer, 31 Mar 2020
So how did I make this photo? Here’s how.
I used a camera on a tripod and two small flashes (speedlights) on light stands. One flash had a grid on it, one had a small Honlphoto softbox, like this:
Oops, that’s 1/8” grid.
The flashes each have a Pocketwizard connected, as does the camera.
Camera settings are 100 ISO, f/8, 1/200 sec, in manual mode.
Flashes also in manual mode, 1/4 power.
The camera is using the 10 second timer.
Note that the camera focuses with “Back button focus”. That way, I can pre-focus at the right distance, and the camera won’t retry when it takes the picture.
