Black and white from EOS 400D

I'm looking at producing quality black and white images from my Canon EOS 400D.

 

In particular I'd be keen to hear:

 

1) thoughts on best method of converting to black and white (assuming the

in-camera option is a no-go)

 

2) tips/advice/resources regarding different b/w styles. I'd like to develop a

better understanding of b/w styles- I know there are lots of variety of b/w

print films - what is the difference between Ilford and TMax for example, and

how best to replicate them.

 

3) if it's worth using filters when taking an image, or is it best to leave all

this to post-processing

CS3 has a nifty choice for B&W conversion with RAW files.

 

Go to the nearest library and look for books on B&W photography. Or check out many

threads here as well as other sites on the WWW.

 

Filters can be helpful during the capture stage. How about a filter on the flash to

correspond to the ambient light?

 

Just a thought, the printing stage is quite important with photography. And the results are

getting better and better at time marches on.

 

Best!

Hi Steven:

Leave the filters home except a high quality UV and Polarizer. Here are some settings you can use in any version of photoshop to emulate the spectral response of many popular B&W films:

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-MfRCuws9dLMwCfdXIolapIM-

Also the Imaging Factory has a nice plug-in that I like Color-to-BW Pro Here:

http://www.theimagingfactory.com/

But hurry because he's closing his doors soon.

Lou<div></div>

I think that some filters are still useful for B&W work - certainly if you intend to print at larger sizes. The point is that is when you try to emulate e.g. a dramatic red filter you are essentially relying on the 25% of pixels that record red (and thus effectively halving the image resolution), because you de-emphasize the other channels significantly. If you took the shot with the filter, taking care to check that you "expose to the right" on the red channel, you will have the best possible source for the intended output. Without the filter, the red channel may be rather less saturated to begin with, so you don't maximise the available dynamic range for post capture manipulation.

Steven, I used to do a sraight 'desaturate' in Photoshop. That was before I discovered the power of the Channel Mixer :) Play with that and I assure you, your b&w's will improve dramatically. the only time I shoot b&w on-camera is when I've got black & white film in my SLR...

<p>Plugins can be good and useful, but in my view it's better to experiment for yourself with a powerful program like photoshop, to understand the logic behind RGB and relevance to B&W conversions...

<p>I'll second most of what has been said here. Shoot in color and in RAW. (You'll end up with fewer bits to work with in BW since you'll lose color

channel bits eventually, so start out with maximum dynamic range and bit depth.)

 

<p>I would not bother with a UV filter. It has no effect whatsoever on the light picked up by the sensor on a DSLR. Whether you want to use it or a

plain glass filter is another question, and one that is the subject of <a href="http://www.gdanmitchell.com/2007/12/27/uv-filter-or-not/">some

controversy</a>.

 

<p>The circular polarizer is often very useful, both to increase contrast in certain situations (e.g. - clouds against a darker sky) and to control

reflections.

 

<p>In general I would not bother with using color filters during capture. There could be an argument for doing this at some point, but at first I

think you'll just want to apply any filtering in photoshop - and with much more flexibility than you would have with actual filters on the lens.

 

<p>(Some might use graduated neutral density filters, but I won't go into that here - except to say that there are alternative approaches in post-

processing here as well.

 

<p>I'm a big fan of the black and white conversion layer in Photoshop CS3. It is very powerful and flexible. It isn't the whole answer though. You'll

almost certainly also want to adjust levels and or curves and do some dodging and burning to get the effects you want.

 

<p>Dan

Mark, I have very little experience in B/W, but it seems to me that putting a red filter on the camera does the exact same thing as lowering the blue/green channels in a non-filtered image. You can't make a green pixel see red. A red filter is red only because it blocks most other wavelengths, so once you filter out the non-red light, there's not much for the blue and green parts of the sensor to see. And filters are never 100% transparent, so you'll never have the dynamic range of an unfiltered image. Leaving off the physical filters allows you to decide after the fact what filter works best for the shot.

 

Or did I just sleep through my physics classes? That's possible I suppose. =)

You can also mask different parts of an image to use different channel combinations to emphasize or mute any part of the image.

1) Conversion to B&W is _almost_ always better done in software than in the camera.

 

2) Photoshop CS3 has a bunch of new tools for this purpose that are way ahead of a simple 'de-saturate' . One of the best of these once you're out of RAW, is the Adjustments>Black and White that lets you tone the image with sliders controlling the contrbution of different channels, and even tinting the monochrome resultant image.

Keeping in mind also that techniques depend on the image - what works well for landscapes (eg LAB chanel duplicate & multiply) is not going to be best for most portraiture.

Jerry - read my explanation carefully again. Without using the filter, the green or blue channel could saturate long before the red, leaving the red channel relatively underexposed (although the colour image looks fine). Consider a landscape of green grass and trees in leaf and blue sky as an example. Use of a red filter will cause the camera to meter for a longer exposure, and give a much better saturated result on the red channel. Overexposing without the filter (so as to duplicate the red channel histogram you would get exposing to the right with the filter) will result in a lot of burnout in the green and blue channel, losing information.

So if there is a way to make the B&W conversion look like certain films just by clicking, I'll

take it.

 

That photo above does look like T-MAX to me.

Dear Steven,

 

Although this is an old post I just want to share my User Defined Picture Style:

"Monochrome, Max Sharpness (7), Max Contrast (+4)"

 

This has a lovely old school feel to it.

(You can always experiment a little if you think the resulting images are too extreme for you.)

 

Regards,

 

Matthijs.