I was thinking about the beautiful patina some vintage watches take on and wanted to share these 2 pics taken of the same watch just a minute or so apart outside in natural light. It's my 145.012-67 which has been relumed and discussed here: https://omegaforums.net/threads/re-lumed-145-012-67.78284/ To me it seems very difficult to accurately judge patina from pics. I'd be interested in opinions on how to accurately judge patina from pics.
Very difficult to make a decision, unless you go for absolute mint. The extreme macro shots exaggerate any flaw, and as you have shown, the angle of light means a lot.
Dial colours always look different in direct sunlight. That's why you have to be careful of sellers calling their watch dials "tropical"
Interesting topic @maxbelg It also raises the question, probably covered before, but under what lighting conditions would you get the most accurate representation of patina?
Well truth be told the watch really does look completely different under different conditions. The pics show what I see, sometimes the dial looks almost new and sometimes nicely aged. I guess when you want to sell a watch it would be good to take many pics under different conditions.
Getting correct color in photographs is not magic, but it can be cumbersome. My usual procedure would be to take a picture and include a photographers “neutral gray” card somewhere in the frame. Then take a second frame immediately after, omitting the neutral gray card. Load the first picture into a photo editing program (Lightroom or Photoshop) and adjust the color balance (can be done automatically) such that the gray card is truly gray. Then, replicate the same adjustments to the photo without the gray card. Voila! Accurate color. Sometimes you can be lucky using sunlight, but most times those pictures will look harsh. Pictures in shade will tend to blue, and under incandescent lighting can look too yellow.
Angle is a huge factor in addition to lighting. I wouldn't have believed these pics were of the same watch if the seller hadn't mentioned the spider dial.
I think it will depend on the type of patina too (shade/angles can hide bubbling and imperfections on black dials, sunlight can be make the dial more red/brown,etc...) so that's a difficult question to answer. Here's an extreme example, but here are also two different lighting settings.
Angle, time of day, sunny, overcast...all influences how the patina will look. I always try to adjust to where a reference point in the photo is a close color match. Based on what I see with my watches, I know that you can easily manipulate how patina looks. Out of the 4 below, the GMT is the one that gives me the most fits, as I always seems to photograph a shade or two darker than what it appears to me it is in reality. It was taken in the car with indirect sunlight.
What color is the lume? Green? White? Amber? Handle a bunch of them to understand how they age. I can tell you speedy bezels esp ghost bezels can look like trash in pictures and be amazing in person. Heck I can get my ghost to turn blue in pictures without color correction. No one in hand would call it blue. It’s why you see a lot of people ask for natural light pictures before buying.