B&W on 10D

[neil_browne1]

Any suggestions on the best method to shoot B&W on the 10D??

[Former P.N Member]

Well, you can't shoot in B&W like with some P&S digitals. Shoot in color and convert to B&W after the fact.

<p>

See: http://www.photo.net/digital/editing/bwconvert/

[anthony_m1]

Neil. I love the ability to convert my color files to BW in PShop because of the versitility. You are not tied to "one" specific look. There are many different ways to convert. Do you use Photoshop? If so, what version?

AJM

[scott aitken]

There is no black & white setting or shooting mode on the 10D. You can only shoot in

color. If you want B&W, you must convert the color image file to B&W on your

computer using Photoshop or some other image editing software.

 

I do lots of B&W, and can't imagine wanting to be constrained to a B&W mode on the

camera, even if it had one. If you shoot in color, you can always convert to B&W. If

you shoot in B&W, you can't later convert to color. And using some of the more

advanced tools in Photoshop, you can create a variety of subtle variations besides just

a simple conversion to greyscale, such as using the channel mixer, adjusting levels

and curves, a variety of subtle toning options, etc.

[andrew robertson]

"Dick", you can't shoot in B&W with most P&S digitals. You shoot in color and the camera

desaturates the image.

[lu_yin]

Shooting color then convert in photoshop is actually better.

 

Remember the old days when you have to use color filters (red was my favorite)? Now you can just use channel mixer to get the same result.

 

P&S cameras may be able to produce BW pics, but they are done by desaturation (ctr-shift-u in photoshop). But images produced that way are usually flat.

[Spearhead]

The black and white setting in the digicams is useful for looking at a scene in b/w and getting some idea of the tonalities. If you don't have a lot of practice shooting b/w film or doing b/w conversions in Photoshop, it helps to give an idea of what things look like.

[anthony_m1]

Example of Color to B and W. <a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?topic_id=1481&msg_id=007Hg9&photo_id=2105376&photo_sel_index=0">scroll down to the bottom to see the bw version of the posted color photo</A> You can have fun with B&W conversion.

[neil_browne1]

Thanks for the responses so far. I've had this camera a little while now, and

have only made the odd B&W print from it having it done by the lab. Digital is

still new to me so I haven't put much thought to getting B&W from the camera

yet, but now I want to start. I use a Mac G3 and I have photoshop 7, although I

not very proficient in it yet. I'm really looking for an easy way to start with B&W.

[michael_peters1]

<p><i>Remember the old days when you have to use color filters (red was my favorite)? Now you can just use channel mixer to get the same result.</i>

<p>

That's something I'm actually going to test when I get my 10D.

Use filters with B+W film on my EOS 650 and then swap the 10D onto the same tripod mount and shoot the same picture.

<p>

I'm going to try with several different filters (Red, Red-Orange, Yellow, maybe a green) and see how close I can get the digital image to what the black and white print produces.

<p>

I can't do it anytime soon, though - first I need to aquire a 10D :D ;)

[mike_morgan1]

Yes. Take the shot in color. In photoshop desaturate. Better yet, for low light photos, use the channel mixer and then desaturate. In this way you can turn a crummy color shot with lots of blue noise to an acceptable B&W shot. I do this all the time. Sometimes I delete the blue and green channels and copy the red channel over. Or I delete the blue and copy the red or green to the blue, and then desaturate. Then you can run a sepia filter for fun.

[nathan_jedinak]

As Mike said... Another option is to use the Luminance channel for conversions. Can be much, much better than "desaturate" (which is my least favorite option), and sometimes better than channel blending.

 

As a bonus, if you have any "unusable" high noise photos, luminance channel has less noise and can produce good stuff. I have a few "impossible" shots at ISO 1600 pushed 2 stops in post processing (ISO 6400!) that turned out completely useable.