D2x 2.0 digital black and white

Hi Everyone,

 

First off--I love B&W. Usually when I get the urge I'll push a roll through my F6, which in recent times has

been relegated to the fun, experimental B&W camera.

 

I was trying to decide if digital B&W was something I was interested in while playing with the new firmware

upgrade for the D2x. Over on the Nikonians site, there was quite a long thread or two, both pro- and

con-, about it's uses. The end result seemed to be, for quickie jpg's it's okay, but RAW conversions via

channel mixer et al are better. The in-camera jpgs were just grayscale conversions, with no pop. The

RAW conversions that were massaged had the pop of custom-printed B&W.

 

I remember using actual B&W film with labs. The film and prints were usually flat and muddy, while if I

printed my own in the darkroom, they looked the way I wanted them to. So in my own mind, you can get

good and bad B&W chemically, too.

 

I had an epiphany reflecting on all this...I'm going to try this myself but thought I'd offer it up to the

masses to try.

 

For my own tastes and purposes, I'm going to create a custom B&W curve to upload...very high contrast,

more than a slight S-curve. I'll then shoot in the B&W jpg mode at ISOs above 800 for noise. I think you

see what I'm getting at. Anyone else care to experiment and share results?

David do me a favor and shoot the same image using D2x and a silver based film in your F6.

 

I am not interested in a comparison of poorly processed BW shot in D2x versus properly processed RAW -> BW from the same camera.

 

The interesting and challenging test is the comparison with a silver based film. If you shoot RAW the curves are not of importance while you shoot. In PS you can apply individual curves to each color channel for each image and then convert to BW. Also who wants just one high contrast curve? The point is to have the RIGHT curve. High contrast for low contrast scenes and low contrast for high contrast scenes - except perhaps the opposite to enhance the special effect you are after. In shooting RAW you get all the advantage of 4x5 sheet film individual negative development you can read about in Ansel Adams book the "Negative". (Except for the 4x5 size and the compensation of dynamic range of extreme high contrast scenes ^^) If you shoot film in your F6 then you are limited to one film and one speed - one development for all images. This is convinience we are talking about.

 

The challenge is in getting the same or better result with digital compared to film - even if film uses all its "tricks" as the "right" grain, tonality, and curve for the scene.

David, I shoot a lot of event stuff and have a tendency to push my luck with low light. B&W

conversion has saved my ... more than a few times, especially with the D2H files creating lots

of 'noise.' Tweaking in Camera Raw is definately the way to go, and all that noise looks just

like grain. Ahhh the days of TMZ are back again.

David. I would do exactly what you are doing... upload a custome curve, lots of contrast, etc.. and assign it to a shooting bank. I tried this, but still end up shooting in color, and converting later.