Panasonic G 'film' settings

Can anyone give me a little info on how the various 'film' modes work in the Panasonic 'G' series cameras please?

 

I'm looking in particular at the black and white modes, currently I have no idea where to start, I'll try some test shots later today at different settings I guess.

 

When I was shooting film, I was using Foma 400 and Ilford HP5, pushed to high ISO and with long development in dilute Rodinal, so I guess I'm looking for a setting that will give me high contrast and a sharp, grainy look.

 

Mostly shooting with fast lenses in low light.

 

Camera is a G10.

 

Any ideas?

Most here will recommend you shoot in color and convert to B&W in post processing. I think using the in-camera B&W modes offer great advantages over converting from color. Use any basic B&W setting and add contrast later. MY Panasonic GF1 has a very flat "Smooth B&W" setting that allows for lots of manipulation later. Experiment.

Thanks. I was expecting the "shoot RAW/colour and convert later" answer, but my brain just doesn't work that way, I "see" things differently when I'm working with black and white, I look for texture, light and shadow, whereas with colour, I look for, well, colour. Using a digital camera has been something of a revelation to me in that I can switch between the two at the press of a button, not to mention being able to change ISO on the fly. I used to carry a SLR or rangefinder loaded with B+W film and a digital P&S for colour, which wasn't as flexible, but worked, my darkroom wasn't equipped for colour printing anyway.

 

Ok, here are some tests:

 

All at ISO 1600

 

Standard, all settings at 0

 

 

Dynamic, all at 0

 

Smooth, all at 0

 

Standard, Contrast +2, Sharpness +2, Noise Reduction -2

 

 

Dynamic C+2, S+2, NR-2

 

Smooth C+2, S+2, NR-2

 

 

And finally, the smooth C0, S0, NR0 image with contrast +20 in GIMP

 

 

 

I've discovered a few things, not least that my TV (biggest monitor I have) has a noticeable colour cast left to right...

 

I think my preference is the "smooth" with the in-camera contrast and sharpness upped.

 

Noise reduction should be turned to minimum in the B&W modes, it removes detail to no real advantage.

 

 

Not the most comprehensive of tests, I'd be interested to see what others think, even if at the end of the day, it only matters what I think, it can be good to have feedback.

 

Coming back to shooting RAW and converting, or in fact any manipulation on the computer, I think my wife would murder me if I spent any more time in front of the thing, the goal is to have a workflow that pretty much consists of printing the photos direct from the camera, the computer is only there to give me a bigger screen to choose which photos to print and do some simple cropping.

 

I guess I'm trying to replicate my darkroom workflow, where other than cropping and some variation in exposure time, I just printed what I had.

Just got these 3 results using the simple editor on my smartphone.

And here's the colour original -

The simple editor doesn't have an 'add noise' filter, otherwise I'd have made it grainy as well.

 

Presets are all very well if you only want what's been programmed into the camera. The above editor applies the equivalent of a colour filter over the camera lens. Not just tinkering with the sharpness, or making a minor adjustment to the tone curve.

 

BTW. It took me all of 30 seconds for each variation.

Edited December 18, 2018 by rodeo_joe|1

You can certainly try to get the best straight out of the camera images by shooting in monochrome and changing the in camera settings as you see fit, but it may also make sense to set the camera to save both the JPEG and Raw files. In this way you can certainly use the JPEG, but if an image needs additional changes, you can always start with the Raw file and process on your computer. You also retain all the color data, in case you decide that color is the way to go for an image.

 

I haven't' used a darkroom since Jimmy Carter was president, but I had no issues using different paper contrasts (or multi contrast paper), and dogging / burning-in techniques as needed. Sometimes the difference between my files straight out of the camera and the processed Lightroom images are significant.

I agree, "smooth" with the contrast turned produces some nice (smooth) results.

Thanks, in particular, I hadn't thought about the RAW+jpeg option, which is now enabled. Storage is cheap and I rarely shoot enough bursts to worry about filling the buffer.

 

I'll give it a go with these settings and see how I like the results.

 

Joe - I've got a sack full of filters, I'll give them a try too.