Black and White with 10D?

[Roy]

You shoot in color (your only choice) and use your image editing program to do all the things you could do with filters and much more.

Here is a photoshop tutorial by Ian Lyons on making monochrome from color (have a look at the other tutorials on his web site while you are there):

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/tutorials/tutorial_2_1.htm

Regards,

Roy

[Bill Koenig]

With B&W film, I would use a red filter to get more contrast in shots that have a lot of clouds in them. If I don't use that red filter, as is the case with digital, wouldn't the detail in the clouds then be over exposed, and the info lost? With B&W film I could always burn them in, but with a digital camera or slide film, once the highlights are lost theres no way to get them back. So with digital, how would you be able to get the contrast that a red filter would give you with B&W film?

[Ray]

With B&W film I could always burn them in, but with a digital camera or slide film, once the highlights are lost theres no way to get them back. So with digital, how would you be able to get the contrast that a red filter would give you with B&W film?

Bill,
Good point! I think we have to accept for now that as far as dynamic range goes, DSLR's have no where near the performance of B&W film, with red filter or without. If you want that cloud detail as well as detail in other shadows, it seems to me you have to either use a graduated ND filter or take two exposures from a tripod and blend them in PS. (Or, you might get by with hand held AEB).

[BJL]

This discussion of exposure latitude of DSLR vs B&W film brings up a confusion I have had: it is often said that DSLR's have poor highlight latitude but good shadow latitude. That sounds as if traditional light meter averaging is a bad strategy for high contrast subjects, and one must instead pay more attention to highlights, as in the "histogram method" (digital's zone system?) as Jonathan W. says.

Once one gets digital exposures right by such a method, how does DSLR latitude then compare to
- transparency film?
- B&W negative film?
- color negative film?
(I think that I have them in increasing order of latitude.)

I have heard estimates of about 8 stops for some APS DSLR's, which sounds better than most transparency film or the straight line part of traditional B&W, less than the whole of B&W's usable toe to shoulder range. But interpreting such numbers is slippery; what does experience show?


Aside: Perhaps DSLR's could offer a "highlight weighted metering mode", or a "histogram metering mode" which uses the histogram from a test shot like auto-exposure mode in a scanner, at the cost of an extra fraction of a second delay? DSLR's have multi-million zone exposure meters built in; they might as well make the most of them.

[mudshark]

I have been shooting with the 10D for a couple of months now and am extreemly pleased with the camera and the quality of the images.  My photography has improved greatly since buying this body.  One thing I miss though is Black and White.  I know how to desaturate color images in various of photo manipulation software but I really would like to shoot in B/W and use yellow and red filters as I did with my Elan 7.  I've read the manual several times and don't see anything telling me how to do this.  Can anyone help?
Am I missing something or is this not a possibility with the 10D?  
TIA
Mudshark

[Jonathan Wienke]

theimagingfactory's Convert To B&W Pro Photoshop filter does an unsurpassed job of converting color images to B&W. It allows you to pre-filter with a colored filter (you can specify the exact color of the filter and its intensity). Then it has a 6-channel color EQ control with presets matching the tonal response of common B&W films such as Tri-X, and another control simulating printing papers with different contrast levels. Then it has another control for tinting the final result; sepia tone or whatever you want. And it is totally compatible with 16-bit workflow, so you can get incredibly smooth tonality. Basically you can take a shot, and experiment after the fact to see what filter to use, what B&W film to use, and which printing paper will give best results, all in Photoshop. It's way better than anything else out there for B&W conversion.

[sergio]

Read the channel mixer tutorial on this website.

[Jonathan Wienke]

With B&W film, I would use a red filter to get more contrast in shots that have a lot of clouds in them. If I don't use that red filter, as is the case with digital, wouldn't the detail in the clouds then be over exposed, and the info lost? With B&W film I could always burn them in, but with a digital camera or slide film, once the highlights are lost theres no way to get them back. So with digital, how would you be able to get the contrast that a red filter would give you with B&W film?

The short answer is: No. All a red filter does is blocks green and blue light. With B&W film, this would help increase contrast, but this is unnecessary with a DSLR. The photosites on the imaging chip already have color filters over them, so using a color filter on the lens to increase contrast is completely unnecessary.

Optimum exposure with digital is simple; shoot RAW, and expose for the highlights. If you blow the highlights, you are screwed, but you can pull a LOT of detail from the shadows in 16-bit mode.

Once you have a properly exposed RAW file, open it in your favorite RAW converter in 16-bit per channel mode (48-bit RGB) I recommend boosting the color saturation just a little beyond the bounds of good taste, but don't clip any of the color channels. Once you have the image in Photoshop, do any levels and curves you think necessary to get the basic tonality right.

At this point, fire up B&W Converter Pro, and now you have the ability to try out any color filter you like; red, yellow, green, cyan, or anything in between. Then you can custom-tune the color response to match Tri-X, T-Max, ilford FP4, or to something that doesn't match any B&W film, but works the best for getting the desired tonality out of the image. (This is why I recommend oversaturating the color slightly--you get slightly finer control when adjusting the color response here.) It's like being able to re-take the shot as many times as you want with any combination of filters and film you can imagine, until you get the exact look you want.

I have 2 galleries of B&W images I created using this technique on my web site: Cache Creek, and Schellville Station.

[Ray]

Once one gets digital exposures right by such a method, how does DSLR latitude then compare to
- transparency film?
- B&W negative film?
- color negative film?
(I think that I have them in increasing order of latitude.)

BJL,
My understanding is:- transparency -- 5-6 f stops
                                 colour neg. -----7-8 f stops
                                 B&W neg. ------9-11 f stops

I haven't carried out any controlled comparisons myself, but I've seen these figures quoted often. If the relativities are approximately right, there's a huge difference between the DR of transparencies and B&W negative.

I've always felt that the general acceptance of the limited DR of DSLR's is due to the fact that most professionals seem to use slides most of the time and are well practised to coping with the limited dynamic range. There's therefore nothing much for them to complain about regarding the DR of cameras such as the 1Ds and 10D which have been designed to have a DR at least that of transparency film.

My own experience with the D60 has taught me that in any high contrast situation, I can't rely upon the 'evaluative' metering system if I want to preserve highlight detail. If I don't have the time to expose for the highlights (shooting whales jumping out of the water, for example), I'll underexpose everything by a 1/2 stop (relative to the evaluative reading). This works out fine most of the time and was the policy I adopted using Kodachrome 64 slides with a Pentax Spotmatic many years ago.

[BJL]

Thanks Ray,

   those figures for slides and B&W fit with what I have vaguely heard or seen elsewhere, with the caveat that the B&W range of 9-11 stops involves going into the toe and shoulder regions of compressed contrast scale. Beyond a six stop range is taditionally considered a tough, high contrast subject for B&W, suitable for reduced development in the zone system, so at a wild guess, 6 stops is about what one gets in the straight line section. But mybe that guideline is for older films, and anyway, with enough effort in the B&W darkroom, that extra information can be usefully printed.

The numbers that puzzle me are 7-8 stops for colour print film, because the "chromogenic"(?) B&W films that use colour dye technology have even wider latitude (and lower contrast) than traditional B&W, rather than lower as in your numbers.

But now that I think about it more, that could well be correct: for one thing, perhaps those higher latitudes are only in some new high ISO emulsions such as the "chromogenic"s and ones designed for totally automated point and shoot use; but not in lower ISO, higher quality negative films.