Lens flare is difficult. I’ve done a whole batch recently. My digital camera puts in very obvious blue/purple lens flare which is really distracting, even in images where a bit of lens flare wouldn’t be out of place. If the flare itself isn’t too bad I remove the colour by roughly selecting the flare
– use a HSB adjustment layer to target the blue – use the pull down menu to choose blues and then select the appropriate colour range using the eyedropper tools – then desaturate a bit and play around with the lightness and Hue setting until the flare merges into the background a bit.
– burning in or darkening the area helps further.
– If the flare is so bright that there isn’t enough detail to burn in then it might well be easier to clone from an unaffected portion of the image.
I need to find a lens hood – why don’t digicams come with them? Susan S
Susan,
I think lensmateonline.com carries them for the G series. Would a good UV filter work as well? Maybe I should get a lenshood also. I’ve been getting some flares in my photos recently. I’ve already got the lensmate adaptor.
Susan and Mark: I bought the Lensmate – and used it exactly once. Perhaps it was the fact that I tried to use it with a 30-year old polarizer from my first film SLR and didn’t like the results or maybe it was just the inconvenience of having to use a larger bag to carry it, but I just decided it wasn’t for me. I’ve had very few photos with noticeable lens flare just using the G2’s native lens with no filter; I wonder whether that extra piece of glass, not mounted directly on the lens to make it part of the lens but out at a distance from the lens, might exacerbate the flaring….? Chuck
Chuck – I thought about this and I did a few tests – Ihe UV filter sems to make very little difference, except keeping the dust out a bit – there seems to be a very slight reduction of purple fringing. The polariser works exactly as it did on the SLR to darken skies and reduce reflected glare from water – but I don’t use it a great deal – those very dark skies are a bit of a landscape cliche. The adapter and filters doesn’t make flaring or glare any worse as far as I can tell. The reason I have the problem so much is that I like backlit shots, and it tends to be sunny here a lot of the time!!
susan S.
Ah….I figured you would have analysed that thoroughly! I haven’t done much with backlit shots, owing to the lack of exposure latitude of the camera as discussed in the other thread re superimposing images shot at two EV’s. Will have to look for more opportunities in that situation….
Chuck,
From a post a read on dpreview, my understanding is the extra glass in front of the lens is bound to create reflection problems and can exacerbate the flaring. The partial solution is a high quality (B+W) UV filter. I’ve yet to take the plunge. The lens adaptor is strongly recommended for protection of the lens and having read a few damaged lens stories I bought one, but yes it does reduce the camera’s compactness.
Susan,
You should be loading up on stuff when you travel to US. ‘Shop till you drop’.
Thanks for replies, though I’m sorry I was not specific. I mean a lens flare that was generated by the software (PE2, Filter, Render, Lens flare) not by a camera lens.
Oooops! Sorry Steven I got carried away! Of course if you’ve already saved and reopened the file and haven’t got the undo history available as Mark suggests, then my technique should work just as well on fake lens flare as on the genuine article I would think!
Mark – while I would love to pay US prices for camera gear, the absence of a warranty that will cover me in Australia put me off buying the big ticket items overrseas (camera and flash – I’ve had enough experience with Canon’s quality control in their scanner department to suspect that having a local warranty is wise!) And the savings on the accessories aren’t nearly so big as on the camera itself .
Susan S
Thanks to Susan, Mark, and the rest for you help. I’m obviously new to PE2, backgrounds and layers. I think I have the idea now.
SM
Chuck and Mark – having experimented a little further with the Hoya polarising filter I can say that there are definite signs of slight image degradation – it isn’t lens flare but with the polariser there is small (but perceptible – particularly in the corners) – chromatic aberration (the real sort – red/green fringing – not purple fringing that is often referred to as CA by digital users) on high contrast subjects. Only appears at wide angle and wide apertures (you can actually see this effect on the pale spots at the bottom edges of the butterfly wings in this weeks challenge at 200% magnification)
I guess a multi coated filter might be less prone to this, but I’m not sure. The UV filter doesn’t seem to suffer from this.
Susan S.
