Black and white digitals

I have seen this setting on digital cameras, yet never once used it. I have
played with taking sepia toned pictures. How does the black and white
performance and accuracy of digital compare with film? I know there is a
great latitude you can do with developing and contrast papers and all sorts
of things with black and white and wet developing and printing. Is much of
the same available with a digital and photo editing program? Long ago in
another life, I had a darkroom, did black and white, and had a Beseler 45
MCRX with Zeiss lenses. Would still like to have it, but, alas.

Steve

"SteveB" wrote in message
...
I have seen this setting on digital cameras, yet never once used it.

Why not? You won't be using up film. It costs nothing. And you would
get answers by looking at th result right away.


I have played with taking sepia toned pictures. How does the black
and white performance and accuracy of digital compare with film? I
know there is a great latitude you can do with developing and
contrast papers and all sorts of things with black and white and wet
developing and printing. Is much of the same available with a
digital and photo editing program? Long ago in another life, I had
a darkroom, did black and white, and had a Beseler 45 MCRX with
Zeiss lenses. Would still like to have it, but, alas.

Steve

"Frank Arthur" wrote in message
...

"SteveB" wrote in message
...
I have seen this setting on digital cameras, yet never once used it.

Why not? You won't be using up film. It costs nothing. And you would get
answers by looking at th result right away.

I'm bored. My camera is in the shop. I'm shopping for another. So, I
thought I would ask questions and get ideas and input. Do you have any?

Steve

SteveB wrote:
"Frank Arthur" wrote
"SteveB" wrote

I have seen this setting on digital cameras, yet never once used it.
Why not? You won't be using up film. It costs nothing. And you would get
answers by looking at th result right away.

I'm bored. My camera is in the shop. I'm shopping for another. So, I
thought I would ask questions and get ideas and input. Do you have any?

With digital, folks shoot raw & apply color 'filters' for effect
afterwards with software. There are plenty of tutorials & plugins
online. It's a very flexible way to work. You could use the B&W setting
on your camera to get first impressions in the field. Technically,
putting filters on the lens is better but don't put the camera on auto
white balance or you won't see the effect in the jpeg previews. In
practice, it's not worth the hassle to use glass filters unless you are
super picky & have real specific needs. If you really hate raw, setting
a manual white balance might be a way to control the in-camera b&w look.

--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

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SteveB wrote:
I have seen this setting on digital cameras, yet never once used it. I have
played with taking sepia toned pictures. How does the black and white
performance and accuracy of digital compare with film? I know there is a
great latitude you can do with developing and contrast papers and all sorts
of things with black and white and wet developing and printing. Is much of
the same available with a digital and photo editing program? Long ago in
another life, I had a darkroom, did black and white, and had a Beseler 45
MCRX with Zeiss lenses. Would still like to have it, but, alas.

Start by not using the B&W mode on the camera but instead do the
conversion in photoshop.

IAC, if you record raw only, then all the colour information is
preserved even if the display shows B&W or sepia on the camera;
in-camera JPG files will be B&W, however.

(With my recent camera I don't record the JPG version at all, only the
raw. The in camera B&W mode can help me visualize the B&W, however).

Photoshop CS3 provides several means of colour to B&W conversion including:

* Desaturate [the least 'controlled' means of B&W]

* Channel mixer (mix R,G,B channels as desired, usually to a sum of
100%). Has pre-canned filters for B&W such as red, yellow, blue...

and a finer level of B&W conversion called (oddly enough):

* Black & White (via the adjustment layer).

This last one is like channel mixer except it provides 6 channels of
mixing control (also has pre-canned effects such as red filter, yellow
filter, etc.).

High end photo printers have several black inks (3 or more) to help you
get a deep and full gamut of blacks.

There are many specialty papers dedicated to fine art printing,
including B&W. That is what completes the journey.

I just received a book called "Fine Art Printing for Photographers"
which has a brief section on B&W. There are other books out there
dedicated to B&W printing.

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SteveB wrote:
I have seen this setting on digital cameras, yet never once used it. I have
played with taking sepia toned pictures.


How does the black and white
performance and accuracy of digital compare with film?

IMO, end results of digital B&W may be very close to B&W film but it's
not the same. There were many types of B&W film and digital hasn't yet
come close to actually duplicating results available from using
available types of B&W film matched to enlargers, paper type, and
printer technician technical capability. Still, digital B&W can
produce very good results.

I know there is a
great latitude you can do with developing and contrast papers and all sorts
of things with black and white and wet developing and printing. Is much of
the same available with a digital and photo editing program?

As a rule, I don't use the set up in my camera to take B&W shots. The
exception will be those times I may take street shots that I may chose
to directly feed to a printer. I much prefer to convert color shots to
B&W through Adobe Photoshop CS3. In Adobe, I use Image B&W, then
adjust sliders to obtain a pictorial affect which I think to be
suitable for the picture. Other plug-in filters may also be needed for
effect. However, for truly good B&W prints, I have yet to see works
consistently as good as can be achieved in a wet darkroom. With
digital B&W, the quality of the end results of digital filtering
greatly depends upon the capability of the printer being used to
produce a B&W print. The printer should be capable of producing
various tonal graduations, blacks as black, and whites as white not
wash-outs, without a very faint color tone (usually blueish) overcast

Long ago in
another life, I had a darkroom, did black and white, and had a Beseler 45
MCRX with Zeiss lenses. Would still like to have it, but, alas.

Steve



Grinning Perhaps in time, such wounds will heal.

SteveB wrote:
I have seen this setting on digital cameras, yet never once used it. I
have played with taking sepia toned pictures.
Hi, i´m interested to know which camera you´ve decided to buy after all. No
offense, but you seem to be jumping ship much too easily since you´ve asked
for advice here. 50D? 40D? D300? D90?

How does the black
and white performance and accuracy of digital compare with film?´
If you´re into serious b/w photgraphy it´s no questions that analog still
beats digital. The main reason is that right now a digital black and white
image can only have 256 different grey tones. If you´d like to experiment
converting digital to b/w, do not use the in camera b/w setting, but rather
shoot RAW and do a conversion afterwards with a software or plugin that
allows adjusting the different color channels seperately. Lightroom for
example can do this non destructive and very easily with RAW images.

Cheers,
Markus

In article , Markus Fuenfrocken
wrote:

If you´re into serious b/w photgraphy it´s no questions that analog still
beats digital.

oh, there's plenty of question.

The main reason is that right now a digital black and white
image can only have 256 different grey tones.

it's actually 4096 levels with a 12 bit a/d (most dslrs) and 16384
levels with a 14 bit a/d (higher end dslrs). not that your eye can see
the difference.

On Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:30:49 -0800, nospam
wrote:

In article , Markus Fuenfrocken
wrote:

If you´re into serious b/w photgraphy it´s no questions that analog still
beats digital.

oh, there's plenty of question.

The main reason is that right now a digital black and white
image can only have 256 different grey tones.

it's actually 4096 levels with a 12 bit a/d (most dslrs) and 16384
levels with a 14 bit a/d (higher end dslrs). not that your eye can see
the difference.

But it does make for less banding if you contrast enhance.

nospam wrote in news:150120091630494741%
lid:

it's actually 4096 levels with a 12 bit a/d (most dslrs) and 16384
levels with a 14 bit a/d (higher end dslrs). not that your eye can see
the difference.

.... or even several hundred levels with a LUT custom-tuned to the SNR of
the camera. In fact, I doubt you'd ever notice a difference in the results
of these super-high-ISOs being offered today with just dozens of RAW levels
with a clever LUT.