How I erased an object from my photo - in camera!

[stevoarnold]

Well, not literally - but I took these shots to test out the theory that minor scratches on your lens dont necessarily affect the final image.

The idea is that the further you open up your aperture, the more you can make a scratch dissappear. To test it to the extreme I held my car key in front of my lens and took two shots - one at f16 and one at f4... Hey presto, the key almost dissappears!




Now the key is still visible as a darker area in the clouds, but for the purpose of proving the point I think this is a great example. Of course it will depend on the photos you are making as to whether you can use this tip; a landscape shot where you really want to maximise depth of field with a large f-number might not work, but a nice soft portrait with a small depth of field might never show any sign of a scratch.

[WAD]

Whoa definitely shows how much I should worry less about specs of dust or a light smear on the lens.

Thanks for sharing!

[FocalFrenzy]

I don't know if this will be helpful or not, but a few years ago, I worked in an optical lab, where we made eyeglasses. If a lens had a hair-thin scratch on it, it would sometimes catch the light and annoy the wearer. The easiest and quickest fix for this was to trace the scratch with a black grease pencil. the grease would fill in the crack so that the edges wouldn't catch the light. A light buffing with a lens cloth would remove all grease except for what was filling the scratck. Since the eye focuses beyond the plane of the lens, the wearer couldn't see the grease line. I've never tried it on a camera lens, but it may work if the scratch is thin enough. It would be worth trying and clean-up is as easy as using alcohol on a lens cloth. (It removes all grease pencil including what's in the scratch).