The Best Camera

By any objective measure, the image below would be classified as terrible. In Capture One Pro, when I’m culling images, this would get red-flagged without a moment’s thought and would quickly disappear in the digital dust bin, never to be seen again. The image is badly composed, underexposed, has far too much noise, the subjects are not being shown at their best, and the different temperature light sources, including a horrid TV beaming blue light, are very distracting. 

Bad Image to Cherished Image

It’s a really bad image, but it’s now become one of my most cherished. Let’s go back in time to set some context. Every year, my family gathers in one location from all over the world. This year, we had family members join from Tokyo, New York, Beijing, Hong Kong, Calgary and Vancouver. Our plan was to take twenty family members on a Holland America cruise to Alaska. 

The cruise started out reasonably well with everyone getting on board and the whole family enjoying a communal lunch at the Lido Market buffet. The image was taken a few hours after lunch as we congregated in my parents’ suite. There was nothing special planned so no need for a camera. However, shortly after the image was taken, my father suffered a stroke, and then another one two days later, and then a month later, he passed away. 

However, shortly after the image was taken, my father suffered a stroke, and then another one two days later, and then a month later, he passed away. 

This unplanned image is now the last concrete memory I have of my father when he was still dad. I was debating whether to take a camera at all to their room, but since the Leica M11/35MM Pre-Asph combination was so small, the hassle factor was low and I brought it along. I’m so glad I did because I now have this final memory with my father smiling and showing his normal personality. 

The two strokes took away his ability to speak, write or be dad. His transformation was so sudden and hard to fathom. The best camera is indeed the one you have with you; in this case it was the M11, but it could have been a GFX100S II or an iPhone 16 Pro. The key message here is to take a camera, any camera, as much as you can, because you never know what could happen in this short life we have on earth. 

Improving the Image

To make this post even more relevant to photography, let’s use Capture One Pro to improve the image to the extent that it could be printed on 4×6” photo paper and framed to be kept proud on a bookshelf.  

While AI could be used to fix several issues, I want to keep the authenticity as real as possible; if this were an image for someone else, I would consider using more AI, but because I was present when it was taken, I want to keep the scene as real as possible to match my actual memory and emotions.

Let’s build a list of obvious priorities to improve this image:

1. Improve composition
2. Fix exposure
3. Brighten humans to simulate a flash
4. Consider fixing noise introduced from increasing exposure
5. Fix the distracting TV
6. Fix the multitudes of white-balance issues 

Step 1: Improve composition

There’s not much that can be done to make this better, but let’s make a few changes to try and improve it. Straighten the image so that all the converging lines are less distracting using the Keystone and Rotate tool in Capture One Pro and crop out the unnecessary information below the subjects. I also tried to crop out the distracting TV in the background.

Step 2: Fix exposure

The image is far too dark, so we will need to lift exposure by about +2EV, however the white shirt poses a problem as it blows out past +0.6EV. Therefore, we need to be selective on what to brighten and to use what Capture One Pro calls the High Dynamic Range tool.

Step 3: Brighten humans to simulate a flash

Using Capture One Pro’s new amazing Skin AI masking tool, we will select the skin and brighten it by +0.3EV and +54 on Shadows in the HDR tool. This provides for an improvement that looks like a virtual flash was used. It also prevents the background from getting too bright and even more distracting than it already is.

Step 4: Consider fixing noise introduced from the increased exposure

The image starts out off pretty noisy given its ISO 1250 on a small sensor pitch camera. However, I tend to embrace the noise as it gives the image an organic look, especially when the target print will be small at 4×6”. I considered using an AI noise reduction algorithm but decided to keep it more authentic. I did boost the sharpness by reducing the radius so that the eyes had a bit more clarity to them (the image is misfocused or has some motion blur).

Step 5: Fix the distracting TV

The TV in the background is hideous and I was tempted to try one of the AI generators to fix it, however I again want to keep authenticity of the image intact because of the memory associated with it. To reduce its impact, I decided to use the healing brush in Capture One Pro to let it fill in the blanks; for the areas it couldn’t fill in, I used an adjustment layer with -4EV to blacken the TV. I think I may ultimately try an AI object removal tool.

Step 6: Fix the multitude of white balance issues

This room had four or five sources of light including the TV backlighting the subjects. There was outdoor light, incandescent interior lights and white fluorescent lights. I tried to make selective white balance edits, but that introduced further shifts and complexity. When in doubt, go black and white, so that’s what I did. I chose the RNI Films Kodak Tri-X.

The Best Camera

The best camera is indeed the one you have with you. You never know what the future can bring and having a camera, any camera, with you can mean capturing a final memory of a loved one or getting a once in a lifetime shot. 

In this case, it was a Leica M11, but as should be apparent above, it’s not the camera model that mattered, it’s that I had a camera with me at that important moment. It’s a sad story to share, but I hope it will encourage you to take your cameras out more and capture the important memories in this short and fragile life. 

If any of you out there are experts on the new AI image manipulation software, please feel free to edit the image to remove the TV and the annoying wine glass up front. I’d love to see what improvements you can make before I commit this image to print.