One other nice thing about an ILC is there are a lot of upgrade paths. So if you get a nice lens but want to upgrade your camera body, you can still use that lens.

ILCs and lenses also hold their value pretty well. The depreciation is much slower than other electronics because camera equipment actually lasts. So if you buy a body used, you can still sell it when you upgrade and get 1/2 to 2/3 of your money back.

This article gets rewritten about every 3 months by someone who thinks they are writing it for the first time.

Also, no chance I am going into that comment section.

I'll make it very simple. Pretty much all cameras are great now. Most smartphone cameras are great.

So you can get great photos with *any* sensor size.

You just have to assess your needs and decide which system will help you achieve your photographic goals.

Full frame sensors make it much easier to...

Shoot in cramped spaces. Get background blur. Shoot a scene with bright brights and dark darks. (dynamic range) Shoot in low light with less noise.

APS-C sensors...

Slightly harder to get background blur. Not as good in cramped spaces. Slightly less dynamic range. Slightly more noise in low light. Give you near full frame quality at a lower price point.

Micro 4/3 sensors...

Give you lightweight and portable gear while maintaining the advantage of using different lenses. Can be more expensive. Great for beginner videography. Can do decent background blur with a speedbooster and fast lens. Give you a nice bump in quality over smartphones in challenging circumstances.

Smartphone sensors...

Are always in your pocket.

If you have the money and want to make getting good photos in challenging circumstances easier, get a full frame. Used full frame DSLRs are cheaper than they have ever been.

If you are on a tight budget and want everything a full frame does but don't mind it being about 1.5x harder to do so, get APS-C. If you go with Canon or Nikon, you can choose your lenses in a way that allows you to upgrade to full frame later on.

If you want to use a proper camera with interchangeable lenses but you don't feel like carrying a heavy camera bag with you everywhere, get a micro 4/3. Be warned, these cameras are usually more expensive than APS-C. They often have cool retro styling and try to give you a more fun photography experience. Panasonic M4/3 can be a great entry level videography camera. Fuji has some neat retro film emulation. Speedbooster accessories can allow you to retain some reasonable background blur.

For everything else, just use your phone because phones are great at everything except indoor low light situations.

Am I deep in contemplative thought or trying to see if I'm in focus on the little flip out screen on my camera?

Sure, a smartphone is more convenient.

But wouldn't you rather...

Carry around a tripod, DSLR, a two pound f/1.4 lens, and wireless camera triggers, set all of that up, frame your shot, hope you put the little focus box where your head will be, adjust your aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, hide the trigger in your pocket, stand in the place you think is in frame, take a picture, then take 39 more pictures for safety because you can't see the little screen in sunlight… all to get RAW files stored on a miniature floppy disk that you have to insert into a dongle that you have to insert into a USB port (NOT THAT WAY, FLIP IT AROUND)… (Wait… no, you had it right the first time, sorry), find the files, import into Lightroom, go through 40 shots to find one where you don't look stupid, then adjust white balance, exposure, and contrast, and then export as a JPEG…

...to get your selfies?

There's a reason you gotta love photography to stick with it.

When I woke up yesterday morning I saw out of the corner of my eye the sky looked different. It was just before sunrise and upon closer inspection I saw a glowing orange horizon with pink clouds above. It was 30 degrees but I was itching to take a photo and decided to try and capture this before the moment was lost.

The only problem was the best view of the horizon required trekking through several of my neighbor's backyards. The first photo was from my backyard. I took that just in case I couldn't get to my destination in time—as I am a very slow walker.

The second photo is the neighbor right behind me. I love the shape of that tree.

The third photo is an unmanaged section of a 3 acre property. I was not feeling sturdy walking through that. By this point the cold was already hurting my fingers and I was super out of breath. I wasn't sure if I should turn back or not.

And the 4th photo is where I knew I could see the horizon. But the orange glowy parts of the sky had diminished by the time I got there. I still think it is a cool shot and I'm glad I hiked my slow ass all the way there. I just wish I had arrived 20 minutes sooner.

When I finally got back inside my hands were pretty frozen and it took me a while to catch my breath. I collapsed on the couch and ended up sleeping for 12 hours. Hopefully that will be the worst of the consequences.

Art demands pain.

Or something.

I hate when people say shit like this. First, it discounts the skills of the photographer. A person made this photograph and used years of experience to get this shot. That is 95% of what made this photo great. But sure, let’s give all the credit to a strip of plastic. I believe if he had a digital camera back then, it still would have been a great photo. 

Second, it discounts the three technical things that helped make this photo great. The lens, the format, and the lighting. The lens I won’t go into much detail. Put good glass on a camera, you are going to get sharp images with good contrast. 

The format and the lighting are the interesting bits. They worked together to allow this shot to even be possible. And, again, the photographer had to know how to leverage those aspects–and back then that was no small feat in a fast paced environment.  

You see, as far as a camera is concerned, an indoor arena is super dark. To this day, people still have trouble taking sports photos indoors. But raising the ISO wasn’t an option back then. You’d have to put in a new roll of film and it would degrade the quality of the photo due to grain. Clean images at high ISOs (or ASAs) weren’t a thing back then. 

So they used medium format cameras which had larger film which allowed more light to be captured for each photograph. More light means a cleaner photo. But that still wasn’t enough. So they placed giant strobe flashes in the rafters. You can see one firing on the top left. These special lights sent out a very brief but very powerful flash of light. It was so powerful that they could use ISO 100 film to get the cleanest image possible. Today, if you are shooting indoors without special lights, you’d be lucky to get your ISO down to 6400. 

If you have good lighting and a good lens and an experienced photographer, you can get amazing images–film or digital. In fact, if I have good lighting, I could probably get professional results on an iPhone these days. Besides knowledge, lighting is so much more important than pretty much anything else. And because good lighting is so vital, I would wager the reason you will no longer see a modern photo that looks similar to the one above is because they no longer allow giant flashing lights in the rafters. 

I get that people are nostalgic for film. And it can have a certain ineffable look in certain photos. But it was so much harder to work with and you could not take as many great photos as consistently. The photo above may have been 1 of 4 photos that photographer got that night that were any good. And he would have an anxiety attack waiting for them to be developed. He didn’t know if he got focus. If the strobe fired. If he got his framing right. Film could give you a panic attack if your livelihood depended on it. 

Film, for the most part, looks worse most of the time. You have to get the stars to align to get a film image to equal or surpass something digital. Especially in a chaotic environment. It’s a bit like music. The best music stands the test of time. We either forget or don’t know about all of the shitty music that happened years ago. Just like the best photos from the era of film are the only ones we still look at today. But if you go through your family’s old photo album, I doubt you’ll find anything shot on film that comes close to having the clarity, colors, and contrast as the photo above. It took great effort, experience, and often great expense to get photos to look that good. 

Sometimes I think some people just want things to be harder. They don’t like that newer cameras are easier to use. Forget that it allows artists to not think as much about the technical aspects and focus on the art of taking a photo. Old school photographers want newbies to suffer like they did. So they rant about how film is better so they can always have a way of feeling superior. 

I still want film around. I want people to still learn and love the format. I just want all of the bullshit hardship olympics to stop. Some people like film for the same reason some like vinyl records. In truth, vinyl often sounds worse by objective measurements. But the worseness has a character to it. A warmth. Certain music sounds better with that lower fidelity. Just as certain photos can have a stronger emotional connection if they have that film look to them. It can make SOME photos better. But not because the objective quality is better. Because it gives you a better feeling. 

There is also fun in the process. Because film takes extra work, you have a stronger sense of pride when you really nail a photo. Photography becomes more about the journey. 

Today indoor sports photographers all use high end digital cameras. They don’t have to strap lights to the rafters because they can control the ISO and still get sharp images. They can also do burst shooting which allows them to get more consistently amazing photos. They can also check immediately to make sure they got the shot and avoid those panic attacks. And because equipment is easier to manage, photographers can carry multiple cameras on their person–giving them more options in focal length. Which made possible this award winning photo with a super wide angle lens. 

Film is different, not better. It can sometimes produce images that digital has a hard time emulating. But digital has surpassed film in almost every objective technical measurement of quality from efficiency, convenience, dynamic range, and resolution. The only film cameras that can still keep up with digital are large format cameras. They can be scanned in at similar resolutions as digital medium format cameras. However, they rarely have optics that match in sharpness, so digital still has more advantages. 

The best pro photographers I know of that are working today all use digital for most of their work. Many of them are old enough to have used film. They have the skills and resources to use film if they wanted to. And they don’t. If they believed film would give them better images, they’d probably use it. 

Joe McNally is about as old school as it gets. He has been photographing amazing things for decades. He took many amazing photos on film. 

But he still manages to get some good looking photos on the horror that is digital. 

The small number of pros that still use film typically don’t care about it being better or worse. They just love the process of using the format. Or they enjoy using vintage gear. They like learning the skills needed to physically develop photos. To dodge and burn without Photoshop. It can make the art more tangible for them. And that is beautiful. But I can’t remember a single one of them saying film was superior. Just that it was the right format for them personally. 

“I like the look and feel of film more than digital.” is an individual’s opinion that I will respect. 

“Digital photography will never look as good as film.” is nonsense.

This is a photo taken during a high school basketball game. 

This photographer didn’t have the resources to buy an expensive medium format film camera. He didn’t have the ability to attach multi-thousand dollar strobe flashes to the ceiling. This shot would have never happened if he used film. 

Shaming digital photography is crapping on how wonderfully accessible this art form has become and belittling the people who can’t do it any other way. 

Love film all you want, just don’t make it a competition. 

I posted this photography rant in the middle of the night because I wasn’t sure if anyone would actually find it interesting. But I was mistaken. I think if you are passionate about what you write, people will enjoy it regardless of subject matter. I need to remember that. 

One addendum to that post. There was a reply to the original tweet that said, “Back when photographers actually had to know what they were doing.” Basically implying that technology has made photography so simple that you just push a button and the camera does all the work. 

Yes, there are cameras that do an excellent job on auto settings. And starting to learn photography is easier and more accessible than ever before. But while technology has added numerous conveniences to the art of taking pictures, it has also added even more complication. There has never been more to learn about photography. For instance, I have been studying Photoshop for 20 years and am still learning new things. But I suspect many think you just push a few magic buttons and that’s all it takes. 

High end professional photographers do not take a new technological convenience and become complacent. They almost always go, “Okay, that is off my plate now, how can I use that brain space to up my game further?” Or they will try to find ways to exploit that convenience to innovate and do something new. 

The invention of autofocus didn’t make the pros lazy. They used it to take more challenging photos that weren’t possible before. Like this osprey catching a fish with tack sharp eyes. 

This is still an immensely difficult shot to get, but thanks to focus tracking the photographer could concentrate on other things. 

Karl Taylor started out as a photojournalist shooting on film before moving to high end commercial photography. After 30 years he has acquired pretty much every technological convenience photography has to offer. And yet his photography keeps getting more complicated. 

He did a shoot for firefighter safety equipment and ended up using 12 lights and tons of modifiers to get the final shots. It was one of the most complex product shoots I think I’ve seen. 

Some might think the final images have loads of photoshop work done to them, but other than removing the supports and fixing minor blemishes, this is very close to what he achieved in camera. 

If you make something easier for a photographer, the best will find a way to keep giving themselves greater challenges. 

I hate when people say shit like this. First, it discounts the skills of the photographer. A person made this photograph and used years of experience to get this shot. That is 95% of what made this photo great. But sure, let’s give all the credit to a strip of plastic. I believe if he had a digital camera back then, it still would have been a great photo. 

Second, it discounts the three technical things that helped make this photo great. The lens, the format, and the lighting. The lens I won’t go into much detail. Put good glass on a camera, you are going to get sharp images with good contrast. 

The format and the lighting are the interesting bits. They worked together to allow this shot to even be possible. And, again, the photographer had to know how to leverage those aspects–and back then that was no small feat in a fast paced environment.  

You see, as far as a camera is concerned, an indoor arena is super dark. To this day, people still have trouble taking sports photos indoors. But raising the ISO wasn’t an option back then. You’d have to put in a new roll of film and it would degrade the quality of the photo due to grain. Clean images at high ISOs (or ASAs) weren’t a thing back then. 

So they used medium format cameras which had larger film which allowed more light to be captured for each photograph. More light means a cleaner photo. But that still wasn’t enough. So they placed giant strobe flashes in the rafters. You can see one firing on the top left. These special lights sent out a very brief but very powerful flash of light. It was so powerful that they could use ISO 100 film to get the cleanest image possible. Today, if you are shooting indoors without special lights, you’d be lucky to get your ISO down to 6400. 

If you have good lighting and a good lens and an experienced photographer, you can get amazing images–film or digital. In fact, if I have good lighting, I could probably get professional results on an iPhone these days. Besides knowledge, lighting is so much more important than pretty much anything else. And because good lighting is so vital, I would wager the reason you will no longer see a modern photo that looks similar to the one above is because they no longer allow giant flashing lights in the rafters. 

I get that people are nostalgic for film. And it can have a certain ineffable look in certain photos. But it was so much harder to work with and you could not take as many great photos as consistently. The photo above may have been 1 of 4 photos that photographer got that night that were any good. And he would have an anxiety attack waiting for them to be developed. He didn’t know if he got focus. If the strobe fired. If he got his framing right. Film could give you a panic attack if your livelihood depended on it. 

Film, for the most part, looks worse most of the time. You have to get the stars to align to get a film image to equal or surpass something digital. Especially in a chaotic environment. It’s a bit like music. The best music stands the test of time. We either forget or don’t know about all of the shitty music that happened years ago. Just like the best photos from the era of film are the only ones we still look at today. But if you go through your family’s old photo album, I doubt you’ll find anything shot on film that comes close to having the clarity, colors, and contrast as the photo above. It took great effort, experience, and often great expense to get photos to look that good. 

Sometimes I think some people just want things to be harder. They don’t like that newer cameras are easier to use. Forget that it allows artists to not think as much about the technical aspects and focus on the art of taking a photo. Old school photographers want newbies to suffer like they did. So they rant about how film is better so they can always have a way of feeling superior. 

I still want film around. I want people to still learn and love the format. I just want all of the bullshit hardship olympics to stop. Some people like film for the same reason some like vinyl records. In truth, vinyl often sounds worse by objective measurements. But the worseness has a character to it. A warmth. Certain music sounds better with that lower fidelity. Just as certain photos can have a stronger emotional connection if they have that film look to them. It can make SOME photos better. But not because the objective quality is better. Because it gives you a better feeling. 

There is also fun in the process. Because film takes extra work, you have a stronger sense of pride when you really nail a photo. Photography becomes more about the journey. 

Today indoor sports photographers all use high end digital cameras. They don’t have to strap lights to the rafters because they can control the ISO and still get sharp images. They can also do burst shooting which allows them to get more consistently amazing photos. They can also check immediately to make sure they got the shot and avoid those panic attacks. And because equipment is easier to manage, photographers can carry multiple cameras on their person–giving them more options in focal length. Which made possible this award winning photo with a super wide angle lens. 

Film is different, not better. It can sometimes produce images that digital has a hard time emulating. But digital has surpassed film in almost every objective technical measurement of quality from efficiency, convenience, dynamic range, and resolution. The only film cameras that can still keep up with digital are large format cameras. They can be scanned in at similar resolutions as digital medium format cameras. However, they rarely have optics that match in sharpness, so digital still has more advantages. 

The best pro photographers I know of that are working today all use digital for most of their work. Many of them are old enough to have used film. They have the skills and resources to use film if they wanted to. And they don’t. If they believed film would give them better images, they’d probably use it. 

Joe McNally is about as old school as it gets. He has been photographing amazing things for decades. He took many amazing photos on film. 

But he still manages to get some good looking photos on the horror that is digital. 

The small number of pros that still use film typically don’t care about it being better or worse. They just love the process of using the format. Or they enjoy using vintage gear. They like learning the skills needed to physically develop photos. To dodge and burn without Photoshop. It can make the art more tangible for them. And that is beautiful. But I can’t remember a single one of them saying film was superior. Just that it was the right format for them personally. 

“I like the look and feel of film more than digital.” is an individual’s opinion that I will respect. 

“Digital photography will never look as good as film.” is nonsense.

This is a photo taken during a high school basketball game. 

This photographer didn’t have the resources to buy an expensive medium format film camera. He didn’t have the ability to attach multi-thousand dollar strobe flashes to the ceiling. This shot would have never happened if he used film. 

Shaming digital photography is crapping on how wonderfully accessible this art form has become and belittling the people who can’t do it any other way. 

Love film all you want, just don’t make it a competition. 

I posted this photography rant in the middle of the night because I wasn’t sure if anyone would actually find it interesting. But I was mistaken. I think if you are passionate about what you write, people will enjoy it regardless of subject matter. I need to remember that. 

One addendum to that post. There was a reply to the original tweet that said, “Back when photographers actually had to know what they were doing.” Basically implying that technology has made photography so simple that you just push a button and the camera does all the work. 

Yes, there are cameras that do an excellent job on auto settings. And starting to learn photography is easier and more accessible than ever before. But while technology has added numerous conveniences to the art of taking pictures, it has also added even more complication. There has never been more to learn about photography. For instance, I have been studying Photoshop for 20 years and am still learning new things. But I suspect many think you just push a few magic buttons and that’s all it takes. 

High end professional photographers do not take a new technological convenience and become complacent. They almost always go, “Okay, that is off my plate now, how can I use that brain space to up my game further?” Or they will try to find ways to exploit that convenience to innovate and do something new. 

The invention of autofocus didn’t make the pros lazy. They used it to take more challenging photos that weren’t possible before. Like this osprey catching a fish with tack sharp eyes. 

This is still an immensely difficult shot to get, but thanks to focus tracking the photographer could concentrate on other things. 

Karl Taylor started out as a photojournalist shooting on film before moving to high end commercial photography. After 30 years he has acquired pretty much every technological convenience photography has to offer. And yet his photography keeps getting more complicated. 

He did a shoot for firefighter safety equipment and ended up using 12 lights and tons of modifiers to get the final shots. It was one of the most complex product shoots I think I’ve seen. 

Some might think the final images have loads of photoshop work done to them, but other than removing the supports and fixing minor blemishes, this is very close to what he achieved in camera. 

If you make something easier for a photographer, the best will find a way to keep giving themselves greater challenges. 

I really really miss photography. 

Photography feels like an old friend I’ve lost touch with. It pains me greatly that I just don’t have the energy or stamina to do it anymore. It really filled a creative void after I was unable to create my original comedy posts any longer. My illness keeps taking and taking from me and it is a challenge to find ways to adapt and cope.

The saddest part is that I felt like I was just starting to master photography as an art form. I was at that point where I could instinctively do all of the technical things and concentrate purely on the art. Lighting was becoming intuitive to me instead of a complicated puzzle I had to solve each time.

Yes, I took a lot of photos that I am really proud of. (Which I am spreading throughout this post).

But sometimes I mourn the photos I could have taken if my chronic illness hadn’t worsened.

It’s also hard seeing the new cameras and lights that have been released since I had to stop. I *just* missed a technological revolution. New features that would have allowed me to do more with less energy. To push the boundaries of my creativity. To get shots I could only dream of back then.

Full frame mirrorless cameras have opened up so many creative possibilities. The low light performance, the detail, the dynamic range–it has all been improved greatly in just a few years. But there are also many automated usability features that allow the camera to offload work and concentration from the brain. These new digital wonders can even be used as cinematic quality video cameras–something I would have liked to have explored.

I had to take these match photos in a pitch-black room, with a reversed lens, with no control over my aperture, and a manual flash. It took forever to time it properly because I had a whopping 3 frames per second. It would have been a cinch with a mirrorless camera, with super fast burst modes and an electronic viewfinder. You can see exactly what your image will look like before snapping it. But you can also “see in the dark” using a high ISO preview. Before you had to use a live view mode on the back screen. But on older cameras that mode was clunky and slow and… it just sucked.

Enlarge!

MOAR BIGGER!

Weirdly, one of the biggest advances is due to a shortened “flange distance” where the lens connects to the camera body. It seems like a small thing. Literally only a centimeter or so. But because of the lack of mirror, camera designers are able to move the lens closer to the sensor and design more advanced lenses with incredible sharpness. Combined with increased megapixel counts, that would have been amazing for my macro photos.

Electronic viewfinders take the guesswork out of exposure–even in bright sunlight where screens get washed out from glare. And being able to compose portraits with highly accurate eye-tracking autofocus would have been a tremendous advantage. 

No more “focus and recompose.” 

No more “Did I get the eye? Let me zoom to 100% on this tiny screen. Umm… sure, the eye looks sharp.” 

*later on the computer* “Goddammit, I missed the eye.” 

I could have spent more of my concentration getting natural expressions from my subjects and composing my photos without distraction.

And IBIS! 

I missed out on motherhecking IBIS!

This photo of my wonderful friend Erin was taken handheld at sunset. The original RAW version was extremely dark–even though I was using a high ISO. 

I had to do a ton of work in post to get this to not look like noisy garbage. 

But there just wasn’t any other way to capture it… UNTIL NOW.

IBIS (eye-bus/👀-🚌) or “in-body image stabilization,” allows the camera sensor to kind of… float. You can eliminate camera shake caused by the subtle micro-movements when handholding. 

How do I explain it? Ummmm…

It turns the sensor into a chicken head.

So instead of increasing the ISO (which is like a volume knob for light which gets grainier as you crank it), you can lower your shutter speed. That means your sensor can take its time and gather more light instead of cranking up the volume and getting a noisy mess. 

In the past, depending on the lens, 1/60th of a second was about as slow as you could set it. With IBIS, as long as the scene you are capturing is relatively still, you can take photos in very low light without a tripod. This is great because tripods are a pain in the ass and you can’t always have one handy. Plus, you can combine an IBIS camera with a stabilized lens to get a de-blurrification multiplier. It’s like having double chicken heads working together. Then you can get sharp handheld photos that are technically considered long exposure. I’ve heard people say they got sharp photos exposing at several seconds. Literally going from a fraction of a second to 2 goddamn Missisisppi. I can’t even quantify how many fantastic photos are being taken right now that would have been unusable blurry messes a few years ago. We get to enjoy these photos all because they installed a chicken head inside cameras.

AND DARN IT ALL TO HECK I HECKING MISSED IT, GOSH HECKING DANG IT!. 

Sorry… didn’t mean to curse like a sailor that stubbed his toe while stepping on a Lego. 

I think I’ll have a cool refreshing root beer to calm my IBIS envy.

(Those water droplets are a total fraud, by the way. It’s fake blood without the red added.) 

And with the progress in battery and wireless technology, artificial lighting has become lighter and more portable while still being powerful enough to compete with the sun. I could have used strobe lights in my little studio, packed them up into a small case, and gone to the middle of the field to use them there.

Yes, I was able to convert my old studio lights to be “portable-ish” but we had to lug so much equipment to accomplish this photo of Brittany in the red dress. The battery pack alone weighed as much as one modern light. I was stuck in bed for a week afterward from all of the carrying of heavy gear.

Before that, this was my hacked together “outdoor” light. The Flash-O-Tron 3000. It looks cool but it was delicate and hard to get through doorways.

After charging 12 AA batteries overnight, I had to drag this contraption outside at the buttcrack of dawn to get my favorite photo of Otis. 

I had to use a handheld mirror to reflect my popup flash in the direction of the Flash-O-Tron 3000 to trigger it. It worked about 25% of the time. Oh, and I was laying on cold wet grass, manually tracking Otis–who refused to sit still. I had to line up a single autofocus point on his head for every snap. The concentration required felt like my brain was juggling chainsaws.

But guess what they invented last year?

PET. EYE. AUTOFOCUS. 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? 

A little robot inside the camera is all, “Hey, that’s your dog’s eye!” and just follows it no matter where your pup moves.

I NEEDED THAT SO BAD!

This shot took 10 minutes of me trying to lock onto his eye with a macro lens. The depth of field at that distance was the width of his eye and, again, he does not sit still. 

I want a time machine so I can go back and retake every blurry Otis photo. 

Also, many of the modern strobes have NO WIRES. You just stick a thing on top of your camera and you can set off lights several football fields away. My photo studio has tons of wires routed in the ceiling and coming out of the walls. 

[Hi-Res Version]

And then those wires all go into a weird analog remote with old school sliders that controlled the power of the flashes. But the sliders were difficult to finely adjust.

Now you can load an app on your phone and adjust the flash power digitally and adjust the brightness in 10% increments. You can save lighting ratios and recall them instantly. And you can preview your work with high powered LED modeling lights so you don’t have to take 50 test shots. 

No more nudging a light and taking a picture. Raising the power and taking a picture. Swapping out a modifier and taking a picture. Back and forth, back and forth. 

Essentially, what you see is what you get, so setting up lighting takes a fraction of the time and effort with these new lights and cameras. That would have been so helpful with my disability.

Oh… the lights are less expensive too.

The future of camera tech looks exciting as well. I think the computational photography that is in the latest smartphones will soon be added to more professional cameras. That is going to make high-end photography so much more accessible to anyone who wants to try it as a hobby. The learning curve will flatten further, and as long as you are creative, you will be able to take beautiful, high-quality photos.

Some might say that not having all of the new tech helped me gain important experience, expertise, and problem-solving skills. Some believe the inconveniences are a photographer’s trial by fire. The struggle makes the art more authentic. And since I learned how to do it the hard way, my journey is more valid than some photography influencer on Instagram with an iPhone.

To that I say… BULLLLLSHEEIIIT.

Those inconveniences just made me SUPER DUPER TIRED.

And some of those influencers take really kickass photos. Not all of them are butts either.

I love photography but there is a reason I had to stop. Like anything, doing it well was a lot of work. I always ended up having to quit taking photos much sooner than I wanted. I had to scale back my ambition to fit my energy requirements. I could only do photography on days when my body was cooperating fully. I had to cancel many photoshoots because the preparation was just too much to handle. And after my bigger projects it took me forever to recover.

GIVE ME ALL THE CONVENIENCES PLEASE.

That “you have to struggle” attitude is no-good-gatekeepy-ableist crap. 

Old photographer grumps are upset because they spent years learning how to focus manually on horseback and use the sunny 16 rule and develop film in a converted shed they built by hand and now “those darn kids” can use an iPhone on a skateboard while doing a kickflip with their eyes closed and still pull focus.

However, despite there being a lower barrier for entry, the technological improvements add new complications to the advanced side of things. So you can make photography as difficult as you desire if you are willing to learn new stuff. Which old school photo grumps are notoriously averse to.

This new tech has all kinds of novel things to discover and figure out. There is drone photography. There is advanced macro photography using robotic focusing rails and ever-improving focus stacking software. You can now network more lights together than ever before. Karl Taylor did a photoshoot with 12 lights! (Captain Picard would totally lose his shit.) Long lasting batteries and computerized sliders have created new timelapse possibilities. Stabilization software allows complex hyperlapse videos. Better low light performance and sharper lenses with big apertures combined with stacking or star trail software has improved astrophotography. Advances in material science have allowed darker and darker high quality neutral density filters for extreme long exposure photos. New focus tracking algorithms have allowed for wildlife photography that was never possible before. You can capture fast-moving birds in the sky from farther away and still get amazing detail. Faster burst modes allow people to capture split-second action. Never miss a good header at your kid’s soccer games. (Is that a thing? I have no kids and don’t remember how to soccer.) 

IBIS allows photography without a tripod. So now people can trek to harder to reach areas, AT NIGHT, and take sharp photos with little noise. Increased dynamic range and new HDR displays will allow photographers to take images of lights and capture their actual intensity. What if the lights in photos could glow like they do in real life? Think about a neon sign at night in the rain reflecting in a puddle. That would look so neat. 

Not to mention learning how to process photos in editing software is an entirely separate and challenging skillset you can master. There are thousands of techniques you can learn to elevate your images. Dodging & burning, frequency seperation, and compositing, oh my! Programs like Lightroom and Photoshop are constantly updated with new features that expand possibilities.  

None of that is easy. It will all require diligent study and practice to master. Technical skills will always be an aspect of photography that anyone can pursue. But not everyone will need as much technical skill to start having fun and create art. 

And much to the chagrin of those grumps… phones are perfectly viable to create that art and they will keep getting better.

You might find it odd that this love letter and goodbye to photography has so much talk of technical gadgetry. But, for me, it isn’t out of place in this sentimental essay. Technology was my first love. My parents bought me a 66mhz Packard Bell computer when I was 12 and technology was the first thing I was ever good at. I learned every function of that machine. I would sometimes break it just so I could learn how to fix it. I took it apart and put it back together. It was my first true obsessive hobby. I found my creativity soon after, and I immediately used that technology to help me create art. I wrote comedy. I learned how to digitally paint. I recorded music. And eventually I found photography. It was the perfect marriage of technology and art. I could nerd out as much as I want while still getting my creative fix.

So yeah… I miss it all. 

I miss all of the technical nerdery. I miss trying out new gadgets. I miss editing the photos I’ve taken. I miss taking pictures of my beautiful friends. I miss taking pictures of weird products. I miss asking Delling to call apiaries to find me freshly dead bees so I can take macro shots of their fuzzy little torsos.

I really hope some day I find a treatment that gives me enough energy to take photos again.  

Thankfully my writing helps me feel creative and productive and fulfilled. And it’s something I can do even if I’m not able to get out of bed. And I am grateful I have so many awesome people that actually want to read what I have to say.

So thanks to everyone for that. 

I always find a way to move forward. That’s just the nature of surviving chronic illness. But glancing back at what I lost is a pain I never quite get used to. 

Though, writing this has helped. 

Looking back at all that I accomplished has helped. 

And I do feel lucky I was able to accomplish what I did–even if missing it makes me sad sometimes.  

Stages of a restoration.

Note: Some of the adjustments I talk about may not be super apparent unless seen at 100% magnification on a larger display. See this Imgur page for highest resolution versions. Opening each photo in a browser tab and switching between them is the best way to see variations.

Having the photos open in separate tabs might also be helpful as I reference them throughout this post and it will be easier to switch to them instead of scrolling all the way back to the top.

Let's get started...

Picture 2 is just a basic levels adjustment.

I go to Image>Adjustments>Levels and individually adjust the red, green, and blue channels to where they were originally before the photograph faded and reddened over time. Picture 2 is probably similar to what the photo looked like after it was developed.

I like this technique because you can always be assured you've adjusted the colors properly even if you have a poorly calibrated display. Or if you don't feel comfortable eyeballing photo adjustments, you can do this and know for sure the color and contrast will be improved. Also, most image editing programs have a levels feature similar to Photoshop, so you should be able to translate this technique if you use alternative software.

If you look in the red channel, there is a huge gap on the left. That means there is no pixel data there. You can literally see how much the dark red detail faded over time. This is very common as photographs age.

Just move the left/black slider in the red channel to the point where there is data in the photo starts—that first little mountain thingie in the histogram.

While the shadows faded over time, the red highlights have some data, so you don't need to move the white slider on the right.

Then repeat this with the green and blue channels.

Moving the left/black and right/white slider to the point where there is pixel data starts in each channel will drastically improve the color and contrast of almost any photo.

This creates a *baseline* to work from. As long as you don't move the sliders too far, you can be assured you haven't destroyed any detail.

This also works well with smartphone photos and screen captures from movies.

This does not work in extreme lighting situations or if the photo is well taken/well exposed already.

If you are happy with the levels adjustment, you can the photo as is or move on to finer adjustments from here.

Picture 3 is a white balance, brightness, and contrast adjustment.

With the advent of digital photo manipulation, we can now adjust the colors in the picture to match how they were perceived in real life. The goal with white balance is to remove any strong color casts.

A color cast is kind of like if the photo has a translucent colored gel on top of it. Everything looks like it is infused with blue or orange or green, etc. If you've ever worn those BluBlocker sunglasses, a color cast is a bit like that.

Color casts are sneaky bastards sometimes—especially if they are subtle. For one thing, our eyes sort of have an auto white balance feature built into them, so we might not notice them without a neutral reference or a before/after to look at. Not only that, color casts can hide in shadows, midtones, and highlights independently.

If you compare picture 3 to picture 2, you can see the white of the door had a strong orange/yellow color cast.

I like to use the white balance dropper and sliders in the "Camera Raw Filter" under the filter menu in Photoshop. Even though this isn't a RAW photo, you can still make the same adjustments with decent success. It's similar to loading a JPEG into Lightroom as well.

Just be warned, when working with JPEGs instead of RAW photos, the white balance sliders are a lot more... touchy. But if you are very precise with adjustments you can dial in the white balance and eliminate color casts.

Sometimes you can get lucky and the dropper tool next to the white balance sliders can get you most of the way there. Just find a place that is supposed to be white or neutral gray and click the dropper there. Pick a few different spots to see if you get different results and choose the one that seems most neutral.

If you have a newer version of Photoshop, the Camera Raw Filter now has Color Grading wheels for even finer adjustments.

These take a little practice to get the hang of but these wheels are great for further eliminating color casts. Tweaking the Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights independently gives you the ability to really isolate pesky tones that levels and white balance adjustments struggle with.

The best way I've found to use these wheels is to drag the circle straight up maybe 1/4 of the way from the center. Then drag the circle around in a circle around the center point.

Imagine the circle is a tetherball and the dot in the middle is the pole. You want to move around in circles to find the sweet spot where the whites look purest white, blues look purest blue, reds look purest red... and so on.

Once you feel you have that dialed in, then you can move the circle outward to strengthen the effect or inward to lessen it.

Here is a quick video of using the white balance dropper & sliders and then adjusting the color grading wheels.

The goal right now is *neutrality*.

Eliminate all color casts as best you can. The photo might look a bit clinical or cold or sterile—but that is a good thing at this stage of the edit.

If you want to do something more artistic with the colors, that is totally possible, but starting from a neutral point can actually make artistic colorization much easier at a later, separate step.

(Note: Having a decently calibrated monitor is important when making manual white balance adjustments without a perfect gray reference. Otherwise, you should check the photo on multiple screens to make sure you didn't introduce any new color casts. Newer iPhones usually have fairly accurate colors.)

When I adjusted the exposure (brightness) it caused their faces to develop some hotspots. If you look at her cheeks and forehead, they are almost pure white in color. Typically soft, overcast lighting has bland and even tonality. But film can be extra contrasty at proper exposure levels. Sometimes that is a positive and charming aspect of film, but I'm going for a naturalistic as-it-was-in-real-life edit.

The shadowy parts on the skin had a color cast that wasn't fixed by the grading adjustments so Steve looks a bit extra orange. Film of that day was infamous for not accurately capturing complexions. This is very noticeable on the left side of his nose. Considering that flat overcast lighting, they shouldn't look this contrasty and the shadows on their face should not be orange. I will have to correct that later on.

I also did a sharpening pass. I selectively sharpen details like eyes, hair, lips, zippers, and folds in clothes. It's important not to sharpen every aspect of old photos like this because things will get crunchy looking fast. Being a JPEG photo from a smartphone doesn't help either.

The original camera lens and film used were very soft and if you try to make a soft photo too sharp it starts getting chunky artifacts. So you just pick the spots where sharpening will make the biggest difference. The photo is going to end up looking soft no matter what, so the sharpening is subtle and possibly not noticeable at normal viewing distances. But it is there for people with fighter pilot vision.

The best way to selectively sharpen is to duplicate the layer, use unsharp mask (or your favorite sharpening technique), and then create a layer mask that hides the entire layer. So the layer mask should appear pure black in the layers palette. Then with a soft round white brush, paint in the areas that would benefit from a bit more detail. If you paint a spot that you don't like, just switch back to black and erase it.

This video demonstrates this technique.

Picture 4 is just a cleanup pass.

I fix any physical damage that has occurred to the photograph (see top right) and get rid of any unwanted noise, spots, or just weird artifacts that do not feel like they should be in the picture or are overly distracting. This is done mostly with the content aware fill, clone tool, spot healing tools, and the dust and scratches filter. (For dust and scratches I use the same layer mask technique as with sharpening, otherwise the entire picture will end up blurring.)

Picture 5 is the final beauty pass.

I did some noise removal and I softened any chunky sharpening. I added a slight vignette to darken the corners and draw focus to Steve and Pia, and I de-oranged the shadows on their faces.

For the de-oranging I created a new layer, set the blend mode to "Color" and painted over the orange areas and hot spots with the dominant skin tone color. I tried to find a spot on the face with the color picker dropper that I felt was most representative of their natural skin tone.

Because it is an old soft photo, I added a small amount of film grain to give things some texture at zoomed-out viewing distances. Since this is probably going to be viewed on a lot of small screens and there isn't a lot of texture or detail, adding a bit of artificial film grain can give the illusion of more detail. I like the grain in the "effects" panel of the Camera Raw Filter but there are some cool plugins that give you various film grain options as well.

You may wonder why I removed noise and then added grain. Simply put, digital noise caused by camera sensors is ugly and random. It can alter tonality and obscure detail. You have no control over it, so it can appear in distracting places. Adding your own film grain or noise is more consistent and pleasant. You can control exactly how much you add and you can selectively add or subtract it in different places.

Lastly, I made the lighting look more flat with some negative contrast. The flat lighting also undid some of the sharpening. Working with old photos requires compromises on what aspects will give you the best possible final result. Some might question flattening the lighting, but that's just how the lighting was in that spot on that day.

We tend to prefer strong contrast in images. But I wasn't trying to make the photo look *better* than the original with dramatic tone or lighting changes. I could have dodged and burned to bring out more detail in their faces, but that would be an unnatural edit. My goal was to make the photo look as close as possible to what you would have seen if you were standing where the camera was and just using your eyeballs.

This was a memory, not a photoshoot.

I'd say I probably got the photo 95% there. If this were a more artistic photo with dramatic lighting I might have gone for a less naturalistic edit.

One thing I struggled with was Steve's complexion. I may have made Steve more pale than he actually was back then, but it is hard to make that call without an accurate reference during that period of his life. The orange in the shadowy bits probably held a lot of the color information of his true skin tone, but there was no way to pull out just his skin tone from the orange. I could manually change his skin's tone, but that would be just a guess so I decided against it.

I'd say she is pretty close and he should probably be a bit more olive considering his skin tone in modern digital photos.

That's the story of this edit.

It's not the right or wrong way. Others might do things a bit differently. Others may have made different assessments and choices.

Others may say I did things *WRONG*.

Especially those who love curves...

...adjustments.

I find curves too wily and imprecise. But they are a powerful tool when mastered. But that's the beauty of Photoshop, there are 20 different ways to do basically the same thing. It's all about what workflow you are most comfortable with and makes the most sense to you.

Also, I'm really liking those new color grading wheels. They feel more intuitive and give me better live visual feedback. I think they could be just as powerful as curves if I put in the time and effort to conquer them. Plus I can use those skills for video color grading which is very similar.

Hopefully there was some useful information and new techniques that you all found helpful.

A while back on a post about a free photography course, a few people wondered if they could use their smartphone to practice.

And hopefully the above shows that you absolutely can.

Sometimes it takes a little post-processing to get good results, but that is the same with any camera. Though phone photos probably take me more than twice as long to achieve a finished product. Better cameras don't automatically make your photos better, but they do make getting good photos *easier*—especially in difficult lighting.

Many modern smartphones have a "RAW" photo mode with adjustable manual settings. Saving a RAW version of your photos allows you to continually learn and practice and return to those photos later on to re-process them with your improved experience.

A RAW capture has a lot more data than a compressed JPEG and gives you extra latitude in processing your photos. All of the editing done to a RAW file is saved in metadata instead of being baked into the pixels. So you can undo any individual change at any time without undoing changes made after that particular edit. And even if you save the file and close the program, you still have the power of undo when you open the file again.

With RAW you can more easily recover extra detail, lift dark shadows, bring back blown highlights, and restore color to blue skies that photographed pure white. (Often you can do that with a JPEG too, it just depends on the photo.)

The main downsides to JPEG editing are you can't non-destructively change the white balance after the fact, you have less dynamic range to alter shadows and highlights, and you can't make as many drastic edits before the image loses integrity.

A wise man once said, "The best camera is the one you have with you."

And a wise frog once said, "Shoot RAW and learn Lightroom because a human being can still outperform the algorithms of computational photography."

Image processing is an important skill to learn for photography. It is essentially the digital equivalent of developing a negative with film.

Not to be confused with image editing and image manipulation—which are also fun artistic skills you can learn if you want to get even more creative with your photos.

(Disclaimer: These are not standardized terms and different folks may use different terms and definitions to describe the same things. This is my preferred terminology and way of thinking about photo alteration tactics.)

Image processing is basically cropping, correcting exposure, adjusting the white balance, dialing in the contrast, and making sure you have true blacks and whites that span the entire histogram. You are taking the flat, low contrast RAW file (or JPEG/HEIF) and balancing all of the data to look similar to what your eyeballs saw when you took the picture. This can also include fixing minor blemishes, sensor dust, or schmutz/hair on clothing. Processing is typiclly done non-destructively in a RAW editor, so all alterations are changed in the metadata instead of changing the actual pixel information. You can undo any single change at any time without undoing anything else. When processing is complete, this can be your finished photo or a good baseline for editing.

Image editing would be more creative adjustments. Maybe you want the sky darker and the foreground brighter. You want the colors to pop so you boost the saturation beyond reality. You want to add extra drama so you crush the blacks. Or you want to bring focus to the photo subject so you place a dark vignette around them. You are still working with the data you captured, but you are pushing that data more aggressively beyond what was actually seen in the environment the photo was taken.

And image manipulation (often called photoshopping) is the addition or subtraction of data to/from a photo. Adding brand new pixels or erasing existing pixels to fundamentally change what was originally captured. This is called destructive editing because the changes can't be made only in the metadata. You can use layers and smart objects/filters to make it easier to undo individual changes, but it can be more difficult to undo a single change 20 steps back if you don't take proper precautions. Manipulation can include fixing larger mistakes like a light stand in the frame or flyaway hairs that weren't tamped down. Or compositing two photos together. Maybe swapping in a new head with a better expression. Maybe you need to remove a drunk uncle from a wedding portrait.

Or you can add a sleepy cat to a field of sunflowers.

The lines between these three levels of adjustment can get blurry, but all are valid skills to learn and can take your photography to new places. At minimum, every photographer should learn and understand how to do basic processing of their photos.

Now, you might hear some people say they just do "SOOC" because it is more authentic or naturalistic. They might even brag about how their photography skills are so amazing that no extra work is needed once they press that button.

SOOC stands for "straight out of camera" and it is a horseshit concept.

There is no such thing as an unprocessed photo.

Even with film photography, many professionals would choose special film to get certain looks and use special development techniques to push the photos beyond what was captured. One type of film might give more saturated colors. One type might give extra contrast. Choosing a brand of film was similar to choosing a picture style on your camera or a preset in your editing software. You could also "photoshop" film by dodging and burning—exposing different areas of the negative for longer or shorter time intervals.

It was all processing.

And if you take a digital photo... it is processed.

Even if all you do is hit the shutter button.

Unless you want to post a bunch of green photos on Instagram, you are not posting anything that is SOOC.

That top photo is the Bayer filter result before the data is processed with color information and "picture style" algorithms. A Bayer filter has two green pixels for every red and blue pixel, so the unprocessed version looks heavily tinted green.

So you can either let the algorithm inside your camera process the photo (which is fine), or you can do it manually in software such as Lightroom.

Either way, *something* is choosing the sharpness, contrast, saturation, and tone along with some other variables behind the scenes (sometimes referred to as a camera's "color science").

And if you think letting the robot inside your camera process your photo is somehow more "authentic" than a human being doing it... I feel you have things backward.

"Well, I use the neutral picture profile."

That is still an algorithm, friend.

A tiny robot runs around inside your camera guts and is instructed to not pull any lever, twist any knobs, or flip any switches that go beyond the predetermined 0,2,2,0,0,0 boundaries.

SO NATURAL!

There is nothing stopping you from manually processing your photo using those same boundaries. But when you do it yourself, you can account for variables the algorithm cannot. And a human being can almost always get a more authentic, true-to-life result than that robot playing with your pixels.

The truth is, almost every photo can benefit from some manual adjustments after the fact—even if you are going for a naturalistic result.

If you are happy with how your camera processes your photos, I am not judging or criticizing you. You can still get beautiful photos that way. Post-processing can be extra work and for some, takes away from the fun of photography. That is totally valid. I'm just asking people not brag that photos are more natural or pure or untouched.

Another common parlance in the photo education community is "get it right in camera."

I like this phrase a little better, but I still think it can be improved.

This mantra implies if you choose the proper settings before you take a photo, you will have less work to do later when processing your capture.

There is truth to that. And it is a fine goal to strive for.

But sometimes... shit happens.

People make mistakes. Cameras make mistakes. Or you have a smartphone with a plastic lens and a sensor that can fit on your fingertip and a bright sky and dark foreground is just a lot to ask of it to deal with.

One photo with perfect settings may not have captured that perfect expression that a different photo with botched settings did.

Or sometimes it is literally impossible to "get it right in camera." The environment may be too dark or too bright or both at the same time. Sometimes there are no settings that will get you the perfect exposure.

There is also a stigma against "fix it in post."

There is nothing wrong with fixing it in post. Some people are better at Lightroom/Photoshop than they are at taking photos and they are just leaning into the skill set they have more experience with. I have noticed this a lot with traditional artists that take up photography. It can take a while for their skill levels to match up.

Sometimes I will take a photo a certain way precisely because I know how to fix it in post. I will dramatically underexpose it to make sure I don't blow out the sky. Or I will take a photo that is too dark and another photo that is too bright so I can combine them later.

Or if I do not have time to dial in perfect settings, I will just use an auto mode and deal with whatever the camera gives me when I get to my computer. No shame in auto mode if you don't have the time or energy to do trial and error with manual settings.

And if anyone says "real photographers only shoot manual" you tell them to shut their gob.

In fact, anyone who starts any sentence with, "Real photographers..." is a gatekeeper and should be ignored.

If you take photos with artistic intent on a regular basis, you are a "real" photographer.

No other qualifications necessary.

The only time "fix it in post" is a problem is when your motivation is not in service to the best end result. Sometimes post-processing *is* the best solution. But if you are just procrastinating or you want to pass the buck to another person, you should try your best to summon some willpower and get it done properly.

The original intent of the phrase was to shame people who lazily shift the workload to others but somehow it morphed into meaning any post-processing is cheating or low effort. As if complicated editing is a button-press solution. Best practice would be allocating the labor to where it makes the most sense. You have to determine which approach will give you the desired result.

So if you don't feel like learning the fundamentals and just want to fix everything later rather than educating yourself, that would be a poor photography practice.

Or if you have someone else editing your photos or videos and you don't care how much extra work they'll need to do to "fix" them.

All that said... if "SOOC" and "get it right in camera" are poor expressions, what should the mantra be?

"Get the data you need to achieve your photographic goal." -Froggie

Okay, it's not exactly prose.

In my defense, photographic concepts don't always roll off the tongue.

If you are taking photos with artistic intent, you should always have a goal—an image in your head of the finished result. In the end, cameras are just data collection tools. If you know what you can do to that data and how it can be processed, edited, and manipulated, you can imagine realistic goals before taking a photo. Through practice, trial & error, and experience you will eventually learn methods to get the data you need. The methods used are inconsequential. Whatever works for you. Auto mode, manual mode, botched settings, too bright, too dark... eventually you learn if you have what you need even if it doesn't look right "in camera."

You can look at a photo preview and be like...

"I can recover those highlights"

"I have this great expression but I like the pose better in this photo. I can just move his head to the better photo."

"This will need a cat."

Photography is a minefield of gatekeeping, outdated thoughts, inaccurate expressions, poor understanding of technology, and just... bad advice.

But if you can navigate all of that, it really is a beautiful art form.

Whether you want very natural, true-to-life results...

Or a photo needs just a little help to become what it was always meant to be...

Or you want crazily photoshopped images that look nothing close to reality...

it is all valid and all wonderful.

So go forth, set a goal, and get the data you need.

When I got to this photo in Katrina's collection of vintage family imagery, I was pretty stumped as to how to approach it.

There is a major problem when you zoom in to 100%.

The paper it was developed on has little micro bumps. When it was scanned, the light from the scanner caused a highlight on one side of the bump and a shadow on the other. This causes a pattern which is nearly impossible to eliminate using traditional techniques.

The easiest way to fix this is actually quite clever. You scan it once, then turn it upside down and scan it again. The second pass reverses the side the highlight and shadow appear on, so you can combine the images in Photoshop and blend them together, essentially canceling out the bumps. It's weirdly analogous to noise canceling headphones.

But I don't have access to the physical copy of this image.

So... now what?

Enter Fast Fourier Transform or FFT.

This is a filter that uses extra fancy math to recognize patterns in the image and eliminate them. There is a pretty good filter for Photoshop, but it does not work easily with newer Macs with Apple Silicon. I really did not want to figure that out, and I also was too tired to go downstairs to my PC. However, I learned that a Photoshop competitor, Affinity Photo, has this filter built in. So, I downloaded a trial copy and started the process of trying to figure out how to fix this image.

It was amazingly simple. It brings up these star patterns and you just paint black circles over every one but the center. It literally felt like magic. (Full screen with sound recommended)

So once I did this process I ended up with this...

The paper still had a rough texture but it was much easier to work with using traditional techniques. I started with a black and white conversion and meticulously went through the photo zapping scratches and flaws and balancing tones and sharpening facial features. All of my photo restoration tricks were needed.

I eventually landed here...

I then thought maybe I should match the sepia tone of the original print, so I got to here...

I think the black and white looks nicer in this instance, but I always like having options and this is the most faithful representation of how the photo originally looked.

But there is something else I have been playing around with lately. Photoshop has these experimental neural filters that use cloud processing to do various tricky enhancements. Most of them are in beta and they can be very quirky. But they have a colorizer that tries to detect people and things and adds color to them. Not every black and white photo is a good candidate. I have found these professional portrait photos work decently, but the filter is very hit-and-miss. And there are tools within the filter to help you make a miss more of a hit, but often I have to accept the photo isn't going to work.

But I decided to give it a shot with this one and surprisingly, the colorizer got me most of the way there.

I can work with that.

The one thing it does well is skin. Manually painting color onto skin is tricky and requires more skill and knowledge of traditional painting techniques than I have. But if a filter can do that part for me, I can do the rest.

So after my touchups, I got the image to here.

All I have left to do is my standard color enhancements to make them a little less ghostly and a little more human.

And I present to you where I started and the finished product. I encourage you to flip back and forth.

I'm not sure how, but I was able to go from an image I thought was impossible to edit to a beautiful colorized memory for my best friend's mom. I cannot wait to show her.

Here is every stage of the editing process cropped for widescreen, so you should be able to turn your phone sideways to really see the changes.

I've been restoring old photos for my best friend's mom. I am going to meet her mom for the first time in 2 weeks and this is my way to make a good impression. Always impress the moms.

This particular photo was a journey. I was so close to giving up on it. I'm glad I did one last google search to see if there was any way to save it.

Who knew a 19th century mathematician would have a hand in saving old photos?

Thanks, Joseph Fourier.

Several people seemed interested in the scanner trick where you turn the photo upside down and then blend later in Photoshop.

Not only did I decide to verify this trick, but I scanned in 4 directions to see if I could get maximum pattern elimination. I also compare this technique to the FFT filter and also the scanner's descreen feature which is supposed to remove moire and other patterns.

If you want to see the entire workflow, feel free to watch the whole video.

If you just want to see the results, you can skip to 12:00 where I compare everything.

Also, at the end is a bonus tip for how to easily fix photos that have faded over time.