New to digital, few questions

[lay9eggs]

Hi,

I have recently migrated to digital and is a little lost. If my objective is for good quality warm pt/pd lookalike prints, is it better to shoot in Raw-color or B/W? If shooting in color is preferred, do I work on the exposed image using RGB, gray scale or B/W mode? Also do I convert from RAW to JPG after working on the image or is it the other way around?

I've worked with zone system previously, and the basic rule is to expose for textured highlight, plus 3 stops for B/W and 1.5 stops for Color. Does this principle still apply in Color & B/W digital photography? If no, how shall I now apply correct exposure using zone system?

I'm using the Canon G10 and my next serious DSLR would probably be a Canon also. so for image management software, do you recommend Photoshop Lightroom?

Thanks to all.

Zac

[dalethorn]

Hi,
I have recently migrated to digital and is a little lost. If my objective is for good quality warm pt/pd lookalike prints, is it better to shoot in Raw-color or B/W? If shooting in color is preferred, do I work on the exposed image using RGB, gray scale or B/W mode? Also do I convert from RAW to JPG after working on the image or is it the other way around?
I've worked with zone system previously, and the basic rule is to expose for textured highlight, plus 3 stops for B/W and 1.5 stops for Color. Does this principle still apply in Color & B/W digital photography? If no, how shall I now apply correct exposure using zone system?
I'm using the Canon G10 and my next serious DSLR would probably be a Canon also. so for image management software, do you recommend Photoshop Lightroom?
Thanks to all.
Zac

Photoshop and Lightroom will fix you up for sure. For shooting and developing techniques, check the main page here under "Selected Recent Highlights".

[frugal]

Shooting in RAW in colour will give you the best flexibility. If you shoot in grayscale then you're stuck with the camera's pre-determined grayscale conversion which is most likely just a matter of placing equal value on R, G and B, this tends to create very flat looking grayscale images. If you shoot in colour then you have the ability to convert to grayscale while controlling how the individual channels to tweak the grayscale image. If you're used to shooting B&W think of this as using different B&W filters but that you don't have to decide which one you want to use until you see the effect, and you can change your mind. Want to mimic using a red filter, use more red in the conversion (or tone down green and blue, or a mix of both), green filter would be the same with green, yellow would be a mix of red and green (or decrease blue).

As for which mode to work in, absolutely don't use B&W, that's literally just black and white with no grays. Other than that, a lot of it is just down to how you like to work.

I've only used Lightroom a little bit (trial version) but was very happy with it. It's significantly cheaper than Photoshop and is very focused on photographic use (Photoshop has a lot of additional tools for image manipulation and compositing, etc which you probably won't use). As I mentioned, there is a 30 day trial version so there's no harm in trying it out.

[Jonathan Ratzlaff]

I you include the most information in your digital capture, then you have the most information to work with.  
Take a nikon D90 for example, you can shoot straight black and white or you can shoot a raw capture and convert it to b&W in the camera as a separate image.  That way you have more control and the raw capture to play with later
Any capture mode that throws away information can cause a problem can limit you if you try to do anything else with your image.

[lay9eggs]

Thanks for the advice. Really appreciate it.

Zac

[BernardLanguillier]

You might want to consider Lightzone also, I know a few former 8x10 shooters who find it way more intuitive for a photographer coming from a zone system background than software like Lightroom or Photoshop.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Panopeeper]

is it better to shoot in Raw-color or B/W?

There is no "shooting in raw b&w". The raw conversion (or even later) will decide if the result will be colored or b&w; the raw image data is the same. Accordingly, the exposure does not depend on what you want to create from the raw file.

[lay9eggs]

Will take a look at lightzone. Yes, I found out that my G10 wouldn't shoot raw-bw. I don't have a problem with that though. Thanks again.

[DaveCurtis]

Will take a look at lightzone. Yes, I found out that my G10 wouldn't shoot raw-bw. I don't have a problem with that though. Thanks again.

I use Lightroom to convert my raw images to black and white. I then use the Lightroom grayscale mixer to process the image using all the colour channel information to create the various tones of gray. It's great! no need for colour filters.

[jdemott]

I've worked with zone system previously, and the basic rule is to expose for textured highlight, plus 3 stops for B/W and 1.5 stops for Color. Does this principle still apply in Color & B/W digital photography? If no, how shall I now apply correct exposure using zone system?

When shooting digitally, and especially in RAW mode, your objective in setting exposure usually should be to get as much information from the scene into the dynamic range that your camera's sensor will capture.  Generally, that means exposing so that highlights in the scene are exposed as fully as possible without "blowing" the highlights.  (Do a search for info about "exposing to the right")  To accomplish that goal, the camera histogram is your friend--the G10 is quite nice in that you can view a live histogram while composing the shot and then view a static histogram of the completed exposure.  If you have a good exposure that captures the available information, then you can use post-processing software to place the various tones into the ranges you want for the final print.

[lay9eggs]

Thanks. I just read "exposing to the right" and a few more articles about workflow, profile & calibration. They are what I needed to understand at this stage. I've got much to learn. It's a completely new world for me.  

[Geoff Wittig]

Hi,

I have recently migrated to digital and is a little lost. If my objective is for good quality warm pt/pd lookalike prints, is it better to shoot in Raw-color or B/W? If shooting in color is preferred, do I work on the exposed image using RGB, gray scale or B/W mode? Also do I convert from RAW to JPG after working on the image or is it the other way around?

I've worked with zone system previously, and the basic rule is to expose for textured highlight, plus 3 stops for B/W and 1.5 stops for Color. Does this principle still apply in Color & B/W digital photography? If no, how shall I now apply correct exposure using zone system?

I'm using the Canon G10 and my next serious DSLR would probably be a Canon also. so for image management software, do you recommend Photoshop Lightroom?

Thanks to all.

Zac

See what works for you. I do everything in Photoshop, and use Bridge for image management. I've tried Lightroom several times, and never found it particularly helpful. Lightroom is apparently more useful if you routinely shoot thousands of frames and need something to help you organize all that data. I just put new images into the appropriate subject folder when I get them off the card. I find it a lot easier to work in Photoshop from the get-go; seems a lot less intuitive to me to open and organize images in Lightroom, because you'll always have to export to Photoshop for any local editing.