B&W on EOS 300D

[pod]

I'm just wondering. I've looked through an in-depth review of the

300D at dpreview, and I can't see anywhere whether the 300D can save

photos in B&W.

 

Does anyone know whether this is possible? I have a strong preference

over saving native in B&W rather than converting to B&W in photoshop.

 

Thanks.

[panos_voudouris]

No it doesn't. The 20D does. Time for an upgrade.

[denisgermain]

Nope.

You will get much better results by doing in PS anyway.

 

The new Canon 20D has B&W filters but even then I would have to recommend not to use any of these effects in the camera.

[anthony_m1]

No it wont.<P>

<I>I have a strong preference over saving native in B&W rather than converting to B&W in photoshop</I><P>Why?

[maureen_m]

It just doesn't make any sense to me to do B/W in camera, as you are letting the camera control the conversion from the color image it actually captures. Total loss of control.

[shawngibson]

FWIW, my own preference, even with a BW-capable camera, has always been to save colour, since that colour information can then be used to modify the tonality of the image after the fact. For example, if you want to increase the value of just the reds by a stop or 2 to highlight a human flesh tone...or the greens for a nature subject...

 

Shawn

[pod]

It's more of a case of, I either take photos as a black and white or not. If you do that stuff in photoshop, you are in fact using a colourshot, and deciding if it looks any good in blackandwhite. You don't get that preference with film. Sure that means more flexability, but it changes things a lot in the process.

 

You can still alter the red and greens etc in photoshop by returning the photo to RGB.

 

I just think ethically, a photo is either a B&W or a colour shot, as I have the intention at the time of making it either colour or B&W.

 

If I take everything in colour, then where is my intention? I have to remember which were meant to be B&W, or more typically, choose the ones that convert the best.

 

With my fuji s7000, I always did my street photography in B&W files (Which also used less space). I was thinking B&W. If I wanted a colour shot, I'd change it to colour.

 

I just think ethically, you took the photo at the time because of the intention. Converting in photoshop looses the intention to a degree, and then produces a false image in a sense, because it was not what you were literally and mentally seeing, experiencing and feeling at the time.

 

Of course I could just think, these are all B&W at one time, and these are all Colour, or write them down on a pad, or mark them somehow. but I am going overseas for 4 months, and that is a luxury I will not really have.

 

I recoommend anyone who doesn't get where I am coming from to read "The Burden of Visual Truth" by Newton.

 

I read it for an ethical angle in my Photojournalism unit at university and it made me more thoughtful of my privelges as a photographer - esp. with people.

 

You guys may say I am crazy, and perhaps I am. But dollars may not give me a choice anyhow.

 

Also of further note, when checking out how a photo looks after a shot, if you can see the B&W straight after, then you know what you really took, and then you can reshoot on that consideration if you wish...

[carlos_santos2]

<p>People saying only the 20D can do this belie their ignorance of digital processing techniques. Don't listen to those clueless newbies.</p>

 

<p>The truth of the matter is you can (and should) do the post-processing in Photoshop if you can at all afford this software. Buying it is certainly cheaper than upgrading to a 20D. It will do better black and white transformations than any in-camera algorithm simply because it lets <i>you</i> decide the parameters to use for the conversion.</p>

 

<p><a href="http://www.designbyfire.com/000100.html">The excellent Design by Fire website/blog has a good demo of a Photoshop black and white conversion technique they attribute to Rob Carr</a>. Look for yourself, the conversion if you want to do it well is not altogether trivial, though it's pretty automated if you can download and install their <a href="http://www.designbyfire.com/pdfs/Carr_B&W.atn">Photoshop plug-in action.</a></p>

 

<p>If you read the comments of the folks on the DxF thread, there are good pointers to other published techniques as well</p>

[maureen_m]

Ethically? Gimme a break...

[pod]

"This could be corrected with some masking work."

"I might have to retouch the cable out. Donna has a nice eye for composition."

 

The guy you refer to Carlos uses masking work and retouches his photos. That means that what he produces is artwork. That's fine for some people, but I think that the only photos that can be manipulated are fashion shots. Travelling is documentary work. People, sunrises etc, if you start playing with things, you are not actually showing things as they exactly were.

 

I limit myself to the Image drop-down menu in photoshop, as those functions are considered to still keep to the integrity of the darkroom possibilities in film.

 

I'm not criticising anyone for their use of these techniques. But I don't wnat to use them.

[pod]

Maureen M, yes ethically.

 

Some people have them, others don't.

 

Photojournalism requires ethics (Which is a filed I may go into). Photojournalists should not be altering images, it is their responsibility to show things as they exactly are.

[denisgermain]

so newspapers photographers who shoot in color and are published in B&W should be banned from the profession? ;)

 

Instead of writting down everything you could have a flash card dedicated to your "B&W" photos.

 

If you don't want to spend lots of time playing with the channel mixer (or are using PSE) you should try the Virtual Photographer Plugin (FREE) http://www.optikvervelabs.com/default.asp

[carlos_santos2]

<p>For those familiar with B&W photography, you will recognize the DxF and other PS techniques actualy yield closer-to-real-film B&W renditions to what you could accomplish with an in-camera B&W filter, simply because the curves facility when applied to the L (of L,A,B) color space let you emphasize highlight/shadow regions of the space in a very nice proportioned manner.</p>

 

<p>This may not be readily apparent until you see a well-converted B&W image vs a linear conversion filter direct from color (see DxF's images for a striking demonstration).</p>

 

<p>This conversion <i>is not something that can be done fully automatically</i>, as it is an artistic judgement when the image is "just right" tonality-wise. In-camera B&W processing throws out a lot of the information in the image and in many many cases will leave you with grayscale images that are pretty flat and lifeless compared to what you could have done with a decent manually-controlled Photoshop conversion.</p>

[pod]

Yea, I've thought of a seperate card. Is a good idea, especially for when I am travelling, but i don't think that there'll be many computers in India when i get to the remote areas. I won't be able to convert probably till I get home in fact, as I don't have a leptop, and I don't think internet places in India will necessarilly have photoshop loaded. That means loading up only colour online. thta's okay for storage, but to show anyone what I have seen would be harder, as my meant to be black and whites will not be black and white, so they won't see what i've seen.

[damian_tinsley]

Peter,

 

with respect - surely that means colour? Under those ethics should you not be taking every shot in colour, irrespective of whether B&W would be a more punchy medium? For that is what the eye sees.

 

ATB

 

Damian

[pod]

I agree that photoshop will offer more control over that part of the process. I don't want to necessarilly have the same finish as a particular B&W film, but follow the process ideals a little more closely.

 

Anyhow Carlos, the process you linked with is within the Image drop-down menu and thus typically reciprocates darkrooms, and that part in particular I have no problem with.

[carlos_santos2]

Hey Peter,

 

I see your concern, but the DxF technique can be applied without modyfing the original pixels of the images other than for their tonality.

 

The masks are there only to apply a bit more sophisticated color transform than a straight linear B&W transform.

 

If you notice, the masking can be done without colorizing the image (simply choose a gray or black color for the Solid Color Adjustment layer); that is what I do.

 

So no, the technique shouldn't give you ethical qualms, because it's content-neutral, and just giving you a bit more refinement options in your post-processing step.

 

I've found a simple approximation to this, just by switching over to the LAB color space, throwing out the "A+B" channels, and then just doing a curves modification or applying a curve modification layer on top of the now-L-only image.

 

No cropping, no color changes, certainly no pixel brushes or anything like that, it's actually doing a service to your images to process them this way because the "S" shaped curves modification biases the highlights and shadows of the B&W a bit more like they would be if we had a perfect sensor with an ultra-wide sensitivity.

 

On film, Ansel Adams spent years, and developed a considerable theory for why he did this with his images in the post-processing stage to get around the limitations of film's rendering of the light vs shadows.

 

The technique is ethically sound, even for photojournalism, in my opinion.

[pod]

I knew this would stir up a hornets nest if I wasn't careful.

 

Shooting in colour and changing to B&W is not that terrible. But the info on a B&W film is different to a colour one. The intention of the photographer was to record B&W. Once a photo is taken on a B&W film, you can't very well just change it back to colour.

 

The intention is there. It will always be a B&W shot in that sense. What you saw and tried to capture, not ncessarily just light, but mood, tone, expression etc is permanently recorded and can not be interpreted in any other way. of course you can change the feel of the photo in the darkroom, but I don't really think Henry Cartier-Bresson and others actually tried to do anyhitng than produce a photo that showed what their intention was from the moment of inception of the photo.

[anthony_m1]

<i>People saying only the 20D can do this belie their ignorance of digital processing techniques. Don't listen to those clueless newbies.</i><p>Carlos, pay attention to the comments. Who said only the 20D can do it?

[carlos_santos2]

BTW, Peter I really agree, it's a pet peeve of mine to see digitally cloned images and other stuff used to move major sections around. Just seems too "fantasy" for me.

 

So for my post-processing, I try never to edit images other than tonality adjustments and crops (and the occasional dSLR sensor dust clone-out if I get one of those annoying speckles in the middle of a blue sky; this I justify in that if I shot film, I wouldn't have the annoying speckle in there in the first place.)

 

Basically I try to remain as close as possible to what would be done in a real film camera; that said, I really think it's worth giving the DxF process a shot, you'll really like what you see and I think you can feel ethically comfortable with it once you've gone through it a couple times.

[shawngibson]

re: Carlos' response.

 

Ansel Adams is a wonderful place to start, and to go back to, time and time again...

 

Shawn

[pod]

Thanks for those thoughtful comments Carlos. More things for me to chew on.

 

But what do you think of the memont of inception of a photo? Should you attempt to record an image with the actual camera, which is as close as as possible with what you want as a final product, or is there more space for creatively changing it? I mean certain types of photography, I have Zero problems with this. IE Fashion or fine art, etc.

 

But what about documentary? Can't you still see a slight ethical dilema, in that your intention can be converted, because what you intended as a colour shot may look better as a B&W and vice versa? Is it always about making the best image or is it about creating an image at the very moment that you take it, to be a memory of what you wanted to record/saw/felt/etc. Isn't documentary about recording that very moment of inception, not what looks the best at the end of the day?

[pod]

Point. Composition of B&W is very different to Colour. So intention should be there, shouldn't it?

 

I know I've done some B&W and thought, that probably would have been better in colour. But my intention, compsiiton, and thoughts at the moment I took the shot were B&W. I recorded it in a B&W "World", in my mind.

 

What would happen if someone coloured all of Cappa's photos or Bressons?

[splat]

I respect your right to think it is wrong to convert in PS but I really don't understand it.

 

What is the difference if I take a color image and convert it right away or if I take a color image and convert it the next day when I get to my computer? Either way the sensor is color, a computer does the conversion, and the finished product is B&W. I see nothing dishonest about that.

 

Do you consider it dishonest to up the exposure after the fact or if it is under exposed then it should stay that way?

 

BTW if you get the 20D and shoot RAW (inorder to get all 12bits of information) then the option is still there to change it back to color and hence the same dishonest representation of you picture can still be made.

[splat]

I notice that you said that anything in the image menu is ok for some reason. There are a lot of things that distort an image more then a simple conversion to B&W. You can replace colors, distort the image, apply photo filters (that you didn't have on the camera when you took the image) and yes you can even convert to gray scale or desaturate or colorize.