Black and White VS Greyscale

[jd_rose]

Hello,

 

 

I am wondering if the B&W image out of the Digilux 2 is different

or superior to a Color image that has been changed to "greyscale" by

Photoshop, Irfanview, etc?

 

 

--- JDR

[EricM]

it would be inferior. the best results are always from making your choices with software after the fact. best results for b&w is to make a copy of a raw image and desaturate it with the slider in which ever converter you are using. the remaining controls, wb, exp, brightness, contrast etc etc provide "the look" of the final non-destructive 16 bit image.

 

jpg's are for kids. jpg's shot in camera in b&w are for...i dunno...morrons.

[Rob F.]

If you want superior, have you tried Tri-X? How about HP-5? FP-4?

[al_kaplan1]

Rob, I agree, but it's hard to cram the film into a Digilux...LOL

[nickbee]

Possibly the best solution is to shoot color and then convert to b+w in software as Eric suggests. As well as desaturation you should try the Photoshop channel mixer, select the monochrome option. You will get a choice of R, G, or B channels to manipulate.

Good luck

[jd_rose]

I love Tri-X, it is about all I use, but as someone else noted it is hard to stuff in a Digilux.

 

I love traditional photography but I love the convenience and flexibility of digital. The only thing I don't love about digital is the resulting B&W photos. So far, to my eye, a greyscale digital image cannot match a silver black & white print.

 

I am a touch tired of carrying around a digital camera for color and a 35mm for black & white. I was hoping the Digilux 2 could be my solution.

 

--- JDR

[EricM]

post some of your images, i'd like to see what you've come up with b&w digital conversions.

[andrew robertson]

Using the channel mixer on an image is like having an infinitely variable set of color filters

for your B&W film.

[EricM]

and that's how they used to do it before raw capture and using the raw converter's.

[socke]

A raw converter is nice but you give up a lot of possibilities software like photoshop, or in my case the Gimp, offers.<br>

<br>

<a href="http://www.hett.org/document.php?id=801&full=1"><img src="http://www.hett.org/files/0001/luzia0400.jpg" title="Luzia with a Rose"><br>Luzia</a>

[eng_shen_tan1]

to whoever is interested, my personal experience with the tri-x film is that never shoot in the open daylight, try to photograph in the shade or an overcast day, coz' it is a rather contrasty film. many people say the grain is fine, but i find it rather 'rough', however, i like tht a lot. any comment?