B and W with the M8

[mlesser]

I'm new to this forum so pardon me if this is old hat. I would like to use the M8 mainly for black and white photography so I'm curious as to what opinions there are in regard to the IR problem in that regard. Certainly B and W looks very different in the pure IR mode so how does this show up in normal photography? Many thanks for any info on this.

[image66]

I would think that it might actually benefit B&W.  For example, my favorite B&W film is Ilford Delta 400 which has an extended near-IR sensitivity. Combined with orange filtration, skin blemishes almost totally disappear.

Also, the magenta or orange colorcast in the blacks may be useful to help control the contrast range and would function as a bit of a "toe" for the response curve.

[mlesser]

Thanks for the information. I'm most likely going to go for the M8 and I'm keeping my place on the waiting list. I also noticed that Sean Reid has something to say about BW in the 4th part of his Leica M8 review. I use Aperture and when converting my colour shots to BW tend to play around a lot with the RGB luminousity content.