Better skin tones

Hi all,

I just mounted a Tiffen 812 Warming filter on my 850 and I have to say I'm quite impressed. I've found that the 850 tends to have a bluish cast on skin tones. The 812 Warming filter gets rid of the blue and really warms up the image.

I picked up my filter at http://www.cameraworld.com .

I'll post some sample images later in the day.

Tom

Tom,

Great info!!! I just checked my local camera shop and they have that sucker in the 49mm mount. I've always had to do a lot of cleaning up in Photoshop of those blue casts. I read a little more about that filter at http://www.photofilter.com and it sounds like it will really help with portraits. By the way, they have a great little information page about using different filters.
Jim

Tom Monico said:

Hi all,

I just mounted a Tiffen 812 Warming filter on my 850 and I have to say
I'm quite impressed. I've found that the 850 tends to have a bluish cast
on skin tones. The 812 Warming filter gets rid of the blue and really
warms up the image.

I picked up my filter at http://www.cameraworld.com .

I'll post some sample images later in the day.

Tom

Click to expand...

Okay, heare are the samples. Both pics were taken in Full automode with the flash. The images have not been color corrected. They are straight out of the camera expect I resized them from 1600x1200 to 800x600.

I'm quite pleased with the results of the 812 filter. Tiffen also has a Hot Metal filter that was design specifically for digicams and is supposed to eliminate the blue. Does anyone have any experience with the hot metal filter?

Tom

Epson 850Z without Filter:



Epson 850Z with Tiffen 812 warming filter:

Tom Monico said:

Okay, heare are the samples. Both pics were taken in Full automode with
the flash. The images have not been color corrected. They are straight
out of the camera expect I resized them from 1600x1200 to 800x600.

I'm quite pleased with the results of the 812 filter. Tiffen also has a
Hot Metal filter that was design specifically for digicams and is
supposed to eliminate the blue. Does anyone have any experience with the
hot metal filter?

Tom

Click to expand...

Quite impressive - actually the second image also seems sharper, with more detail (in the video cassette boxes, for example) - do you think it's due to the filter, or different settings? The other Tiffen filter, I think, is called a "hot mirror" filter.

Misha

I'm guessing that the shrapness of the background is due to a change in F stop that was induced by the filter. I'm not a photography expert

Tom

michael said:

Tom Monico said:

Okay, heare are the samples. Both pics were taken in Full automode with
the flash. The images have not been color corrected. They are straight
out of the camera expect I resized them from 1600x1200 to 800x600.

I'm quite pleased with the results of the 812 filter. Tiffen also has a
Hot Metal filter that was design specifically for digicams and is
supposed to eliminate the blue. Does anyone have any experience with the
hot metal filter?

Tom

Click to expand...

Quite impressive - actually the second image also seems sharper, with
more detail (in the video cassette boxes, for example) - do you think
it's due to the filter, or different settings? The other Tiffen filter, I
think, is called a "hot mirror" filter.

Misha

Click to expand...

You are correct. Hot Mirror. Sorry.

michael said:

Tom Monico said:

Okay, heare are the samples. Both pics were taken in Full automode with
the flash. The images have not been color corrected. They are straight
out of the camera expect I resized them from 1600x1200 to 800x600.

I'm quite pleased with the results of the 812 filter. Tiffen also has a
Hot Metal filter that was design specifically for digicams and is
supposed to eliminate the blue. Does anyone have any experience with the
hot metal filter?

Tom

Click to expand...

Quite impressive - actually the second image also seems sharper, with
more detail (in the video cassette boxes, for example) - do you think
it's due to the filter, or different settings? The other Tiffen filter, I
think, is called a "hot mirror" filter.

Misha

Click to expand...

What I noticed with the filter is that it seemed MORE FOCUSED and clearer............

It does look a lot better..............

Was the camera on a tripod? with exact same settings?

If so, then if I get this camera, I'll get the filter too

The camera was not on a tripod, it was hand held for both shots. Both shots were taken with the cameras full automode. All I did was point and shoot.

The software I have says that both images used an F2.8 aperture, but I'm not sure I believe it. I belive the shutter synced at 1/90.

Tom

Ronnie Alcorn said:

What I noticed with the filter is that it seemed MORE FOCUSED and
clearer............

It does look a lot better..............

Was the camera on a tripod? with exact same settings?

If so, then if I get this camera, I'll get the filter too

Click to expand...

Tom Monico said:

The camera was not on a tripod, it was hand held for both shots. Both
shots were taken with the cameras full automode. All I did was point and
shoot.

The software I have says that both images used an F2.8 aperture, but I'm
not sure I believe it. I belive the shutter synced at 1/90.

Click to expand...

Thanks Tom. Probably a silly question, but when you put a filter on this camera, you can still fully zoom in and out right?

WOW!!! The color difference is great. But the sharpness of the background has me baffled. It has to be an f stop thing because the foreground of the first picture is sharp as well. Oh well....if this filter allows the camera to use a larger f stop I guess that's all the better. Thanks for the tip and the sample images.
Jim

Tom Monico said:

Tom

michael said:

Tom Monico said:

Okay, heare are the samples. Both pics were taken in Full automode with
the flash. The images have not been color corrected. They are straight
out of the camera expect I resized them from 1600x1200 to 800x600.

I'm quite pleased with the results of the 812 filter. Tiffen also has a
Hot Metal filter that was design specifically for digicams and is
supposed to eliminate the blue. Does anyone have any experience with the
hot metal filter?

Tom

Click to expand...

Quite impressive - actually the second image also seems sharper, with
more detail (in the video cassette boxes, for example) - do you think
it's due to the filter, or different settings? The other Tiffen filter, I
think, is called a "hot mirror" filter.

Misha

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Tom Monico said:

Okay, heare are the samples. Both pics were taken in Full automode with
the flash. The images have not been color corrected. They are straight
out of the camera expect I resized them from 1600x1200 to 800x600.

I'm quite pleased with the results of the 812 filter. Tiffen also has a
Hot Metal filter that was design specifically for digicams and is
supposed to eliminate the blue. Does anyone have any experience with the
hot metal filter?

Tom

Epson 850Z without Filter:



Epson 850Z with Tiffen 812 warming filter:

Click to expand...

Very good result, I just want to know whether the Tiffen 812 warmup filter can be used on the N950. Its a common problem in giving cooler skin tone for many 2M pixels digicam, I quess they use the same CCD as well as same software for colour decoding. The 28mm N950 filter is not common though, I just want to do an experiment like you using the 81A Hoya filter of my 35mm camera, just holding it in front of the lens by hand, hope to get positive result like you.

When using the filter how do you handle the shadow of the flash at the bottom of picture when at wide angle zoom because of the filter adapter? Are the only 2 options not to use the full wide angle with add on lens or use an external flash?

Tom Monico said:

Okay, heare are the samples. Both pics were taken in Full automode with
the flash. The images have not been color corrected. They are straight
out of the camera expect I resized them from 1600x1200 to 800x600.

I'm quite pleased with the results of the 812 filter. Tiffen also has a
Hot Metal filter that was design specifically for digicams and is
supposed to eliminate the blue. Does anyone have any experience with the
hot metal filter?

Tom

Click to expand...

Tom,

Would it be possible that on the first shot you standing back further and the zoomed more telephoto than the second shot? That would explain the reduced depth of field.

Bob G.

Tom Monico said:

The software I have says that both images used an F2.8 aperture, but I'm
not sure I believe it. I belive the shutter synced at 1/90.

Tom

Ronnie Alcorn said:

What I noticed with the filter is that it seemed MORE FOCUSED and
clearer............

It does look a lot better..............

Was the camera on a tripod? with exact same settings?

If so, then if I get this camera, I'll get the filter too

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Tom why can't you use software to fix the problem. I use MGI photo suite and it just requires one click. Have you tried to correct this problem via software? I purchased the tiffen telephoto lens and I like it. I just don't want to start collecting more things that I have to carry around.
Bob

Tom Monico said:

Okay, heare are the samples. Both pics were taken in Full automode with
the flash. The images have not been color corrected. They are straight
out of the camera expect I resized them from 1600x1200 to 800x600.

I'm quite pleased with the results of the 812 filter. Tiffen also has a
Hot Metal filter that was design specifically for digicams and is
supposed to eliminate the blue. Does anyone have any experience with the
hot metal filter?

Tom

Epson 850Z without Filter:



Epson 850Z with Tiffen 812 warming filter:

Click to expand...

I used Photoshop before the filter. My preference is not to have to color correct the images for the blue cast.

Bob said:

Tom why can't you use software to fix the problem. I use MGI photo suite
and it just requires one click. Have you tried to correct this problem
via software? I purchased the tiffen telephoto lens and I like it. I just
don't want to start collecting more things that I have to carry around.
Bob

Click to expand...

I very rarely use the camera at it's widest setting (35mm), so the shadow created by the lens adapter is not an issue for. However, if it was, I'd use an external flash.

Bob G. said:

Tom Monico said:

Okay, heare are the samples. Both pics were taken in Full automode with
the flash. The images have not been color corrected. They are straight
out of the camera expect I resized them from 1600x1200 to 800x600.

I'm quite pleased with the results of the 812 filter. Tiffen also has a
Hot Metal filter that was design specifically for digicams and is
supposed to eliminate the blue. Does anyone have any experience with the
hot metal filter?

Tom

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

No. Both my daughter and I were sitting on the floor. I took the no filter picture first and then within a minute mounted the 812 and took the picture. The distance between camera and subject never changed.

Tom

Bob G. said:

Tom,

Would it be possible that on the first shot you standing back further and
the zoomed more telephoto than the second shot? That would explain the
reduced depth of field.

Click to expand...

Yes you can zoom. Mounting the filter does not interfere.

Actually the filter adapter is a nice design. It's an extentioin that screws on the camera body and completely encapsalates the lens system. The only down side is that it will create a flash shadow in the bottom right corner of the image if you are zoomed all the way out to 35mm. If you're at about 60mm (guess) you will not see a shadow. The shadow can be eliminated by using an external flash.

Ronnie Alcorn said:

Tom Monico said:

The camera was not on a tripod, it was hand held for both shots. Both
shots were taken with the cameras full automode. All I did was point and
shoot.

The software I have says that both images used an F2.8 aperture, but I'm
not sure I believe it. I belive the shutter synced at 1/90.

Click to expand...

Thanks Tom. Probably a silly question, but when you put a filter
on this camera, you can still fully zoom in and out right?

Click to expand...

The probably with post processing is the extra file storage space. It is always best to keep the orginal file. Also the post processed file will probably be larger than the original to avoid losses do to recompression. So now a photo that could have take up 600kb of storage space may now be 7Mb for a TIFF file and JPEG (orginal) file. If a simple filter can save me 6.4Mb of hard drive and/or CD-R space I will use the filter.

Bob said:

Tom Monico said:

Okay, heare are the samples. Both pics were taken in Full automode with
the flash. The images have not been color corrected. They are straight
out of the camera expect I resized them from 1600x1200 to 800x600.

I'm quite pleased with the results of the 812 filter. Tiffen also has a
Hot Metal filter that was design specifically for digicams and is
supposed to eliminate the blue. Does anyone have any experience with the
hot metal filter?

Tom

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Tom:

Your exploration and willingness to experiment and ability to recognize the blue cast of the images is very commendable. I applaud you for this.

As with several others, one of the first things I noticed with the images you presented was how much sharper was the one with the filter. There is some speculation as to why the filtered one is sharper (camera shake, changed depth of field ...) but I have my own take on why the seond one is sharper. I don't know if you have followed any of the debates at this site re the tendency of various camera models (Nikon 950 and Oly C2000Z among them) to have a blue cast to them. Well, very early on, I had commented in a posting that I felt that images from the Nikon 950 (and others as I later noticed) were quite cloudy looking to me ( I described it as appearing to have a sheet of waxed paper covering the image). I believe that this cloudy appearance is directly related to the tendency toward blue. I would say that this same cloudy appearance applies to the Epson 850Z (and I have stated in the past that the Epson 850Z has the same characteristic 'blueness' as the Nikon and Oly).

I believe that you may have done a great service to the digicam community if my conjecture here proves out. After I had, as far as I was concerned, pretty much proven my case with regard to the blue tendency in the Nikon, I tried to get a thread started to get ideas to explore workarounds for this problem for these digicams, but was severly discouraged and basically gave up trying to pursue the subject further (a number of Nikon owners in particular just were not willing to believe that their beloved Nikon could be making such a serious error) .

It would be nice if you could, once and for all, eliminate the alternate possible reason for the fuzziness in your images which you presented. Then you could declare, with some authority, that you likely have the solution for this problem in a number of camera models. I know that if this is a solution for this that at least one person - Francis C.F.P. (check his message in this thread) would be grateful to you. Do you think that you could take some more time and, with some care in setup (use a tripod for example) pin this down as much as is possible?

Fred H.