Restoring an old Photograph

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Some months ago a friend at work gave me a CD full of images. The images were of retirement / leaving presentations within the Rolls Royce Experimental Department in Derby stemming back some 50 years.

As I looked through the images one in particular caught my eye. It was a presentation from the mid-sixties and the image was taken in the Hand Turret bay of the Experimental Machine Shop (a hand turret is a lathe which has the auxiliary tools stored in a rotating device that looks like a gun turret). 

This was the bay in which I served part of my apprenticeship some 15 years later and the picture shows several people who would eventually become colleagues and friends and one person who would become my Foreman (That's the guy with the handbag - Ernie Dean).

Sadly the image (seen here) was badly discoloured and damaged before it was scanned which made it difficult to see and not really worth printing.

Original Image

Having seen a photo restoration tutorial by Janine Smith on www.tipsquirrel.com I decided to see if I could do anything with this image to make it better.

I can categorically state that my skills in the field of restoration pail against those of Janine however her tutorials and guidance gave me the inspiration to give this a go.

Janine Smith recommends starting the restoration process by using the HDR Toning feature in Photoshop CS5. I made an ‘educated’ guess that the original image was in greyscale so after opening the image in the HDR Toning screen I set about trying to recreate that greyscale look. I tried a few presets and settled on monochrome. Not being too familiar with this screen, I continued to move the various sliders until I had, what I thought, was a satisfactory result.  opened the image into Photoshop and I called the HDR layer DESATURATE. At this stage I added a couple of levels adjustment layers to raise the overall look of the image.

Pallet workflow

I took the view to 100% so that I could examine it t closely. The first thing that struck me was just how much dirt and dust was on the image so I decided that my next task should be to remove it.

I created a blank layer, selected the clone stamp tool and began cloning out the damage. I cloned onto a separate layer just so that I could track my progress and also rectify any cloning mistakes more easily.  I worked my way in stages from bottom to top and left to right. This process took about two hours but was well worth it.

Next task was to introduce another levels adjustment layer to correct the black and white points. I introduced a Brightness layer to lift the overall image.

Lastly I made a selection of the faces of the two main subjects, copied them to a new layer and then used the multiply blend mode just to bring out their features a little. Having done all this I finally added a VERY slight Gaussian Blur to smooth out the final look of the image.

The result of all this work is shown below against the original for comparison. All-in-all it took about 3 hours in a couple of sessions. I learned a lot and I found the whole process very satisfying.

Final Fixed Image

Original Image

My thanks go to Janine Smith providing the knowhow to get me started and www.tipsquirrel.com for providing a place to learn all these skills by putting them all on one amazing website.

Next time ...... Macro using focus stacking

Using a Polarising Filter

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A couple of months ago I decided to purchase a Circular Polarising filter. I’d been reading a lot about the Polariser but I’d never actually owned one myself.

Although there’s a lot to be said for the way in which the Polariser enriches the colours in an image it was the filter’s effect on reflected light that interested me.  I’d seen a few imaged in magazines where reflected light had been all but removed by correctly using a Polariser. Thie was especially useful when taking photographs containing water or glass. Being principally interested in Landscapes and structures the thought of being able to reduce reflected glare really appealed.

My problem was that, as with most people these days, cash is not exactly free flowing and some of these filters come with a pretty hefty price tag on them.  It was a ‘Catch 22’ situation.  I wanted to try a Polariser but didn’t want to spend the earth until I’d seen what they could do first hand.

I have several different lenses and they all have different filter threads so I decided to purchase a Polariser that would fit my Cokin P-series filter holder.  I’ve already got the adaptor rings for all my lenses so by buying a Cokin style filter I’d get a one-filter-fits-all solution.

Looking around I settled on the Kood P Series Circular Polariser Filter which I got from Crooked Imaging for £26. When the filter arrived I was pleased with the quality and decided to try it at the first opportunity.

I
 took the images below during a walk along the river Trent in Ingleby near Derby.  In this first image I could see the plants lurking below the water surface being moved by the flowing current. I decided to try to photograph them without the Polariser just to see if I could get any reasonable results. As you can see, the plants are just visible.

No Polarising Filter

This second image was taken with the Polariser fitted into the filter holder. As the filter is circular it’s easy to rotate it in order to get the best effect. It took a few minutes to get the filter into the right position to remove the surface reflections from the water but I feel it was time well spent as the plants beneath the surface are now clearly visible.

With Polarising Filter

I repeated the process above with these next two images. The first was taken without the filter fitted and once again the reflection of the light on the water is very prominent and, whilst quite striking, it wasn’t the result I was after.

No Polarising Filter

This second image was taken with the filter fitted and rotated to reduce the reflection to a minimum. In my opinion a much more pleasing and interesting result with the river bed clearly visible.

With Polarising Filter

As with all photography, beauty is 'in the eye-of-the-beholder’ and the effects of the filter might not be for everyone but for me the effects of the Polarising Filter are quite significant and I’m glad I’ve now got one to use. I’m not sure what adding another £100+ to the price tag would do for the images but for now that’s something I’m just going to have to wonder about !!

Next time….. my first attempts at photo restoration. 

Photographing a local gig

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On Friday the 27th of May 2011 I had the opportunity to photograph three local bands at a venue called the Shakespeare Inn in Saddler Gate, Derby.

The event was called the was called Fontana Sound System Goes BOOM!.

Photographing bands is something I'd never done before and really didn't know what to expect. When my daughter Becki and I arrived at the venue we realised that the performances were going to take place outside at the rear of the pub. Not initially a problem as it was a lovely Spring evening, however, it was about 20:30 and the light was beginning to fade rapidly. It wasn't until the first band started to play that it dawned on me that there was no stage lighting, only the lights that illuminated the pub yard. Any thoughts of photographing without flash went out of the window immediately!!

I knew I was going to have to swap between my Tamron 17-50 f2.8 and my Sigma 70 - 300mm f4.5. I tried a few without flash but even with the f2.8 and a high ISO the results were pretty awful even on the monitor of the D300s. 

So I donned the SB-600 flash and set the camera to manual mode with a shutter speed set at  1/60th of a second I started to shoot the band. As I took the shots I varied the aperture setting and the ISO until I was happy with the results. I took 130 shots and got about 100 usable ones which I've posted on my photoshop.com Gallery and on my Carrington Imagery Facebook page.

Below are a few of my favorite shots. 

Ben Ryan (WhiteMoor) 

Tom Gourlay (Tom Gourlay and the House of Thieves)

Nathan Tunnicliffe (Remand to Vegas)

Gary "Barrington" Cole (WhiteMoor)

Next Time.... Using  a Polarising Filter. 

Macro using flash and coloured gels

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Hi All,


I've been doing some more macro photography but this time I wanted to do something a little different so I decided that I would use some background flash to illuminate my subject from the rear. I thought it might be interesting to use some coloured gels on the flash unit to give a different effect. 

I purchased THE STROBIST FILTER COLLECTION from Crooked Imaging. The kit comes complete with all the filters you could need. Each filter is cut to suit the face of the majority of flash units. In this case I'm using it with a Nikon SB-600 flash unit and I hold the filters in place using a small amount of masking tape. Adding the gels to the flash unit gives a new variety of potential images.


I used my standard macro set up as described in a previous post on this blog but I added a grey background card behind the subject and used my SB-600 with coloured gels to illuminate it. 


I took a budding branch from a tree in the garden and set it up on the table. Using my Sigma 50mm Macro lens I took this initial shot with a light blue gel over the flash gun and my LED macro light set at it's lowest setting.

Budding Twig with light blue gel

 This next shot is of the main bud taken with a purple gel on the flash gun and the LED macro light set low.

Macro shot of main bud with purple gel

For this next image I closed in on the main bud and used the light blue gel but with no front illumination from the LED macro light.

Light blue gel with no front light.

For this last shot I rotated the bud around in the holder so that I could shoot it from the top. I switched on the LED Macro light but left it set at it's lowest setting to bring out the yellow of the bud. I also added a green gel to the flash gun.

Green gel and low front illumination.

As you can see, adding some simple coloured gels to a flash gun can dramatically change the whole look if the shot. The gels cost under £10 for the set and are well worth getting.

Next time..... Shooting a band at a local venue