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Black and White image quality


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13 replies to this topic

#1
walt@wblady.com

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Most digital cameras offer the option of shooting in Black and White as opposed to shooting in colour, then converting your image to Black and White in post. Is one method better than the other, and why?

#2
Nikon Shooter

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Once the image contains only the luminance of the scene,

you will have less flexibility to tweak it tonally since all chro-
minance will have been ignored — reducing the file size.

I did test that aspect and went on capturing all spectrums.



#3
Jerry_

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If you have the camera take the picture « in black and white » you accept the settings defined by the camera manufacturer.
This can be convenient if you are not familiar with - or don’t want to bother about - post processing.

Once you want to take more control over the resulting picture you will want to do it in post-processing.
As for all other post-processing, while all photo editing software will allow you to turn a picture to BW, some will do a better job - or have better presets (which can be nice starting points) - than others.
As regards conversion to BW my personal preference is using Tonality from Skylum (previously MacPhun)

#4
TBonz

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I really don't see a reason to give up a color image.  It is easy and effectively a better option to convert an image in post processing.  It also gives you the option of having both a color and B&W version of the image available.  Or the option to leave in color once you have seen the final image...



#5
Merco_61

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If you shoot in raw, you still have the option to process in colour, but you get an approximation of the monochrome colour as the embedded jpg preview.

 

That said, doing the conversion in post will usually render a better resulting file.



#6
walt@wblady.com

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Thanks for the feedback everyone. I thought that one conversion method might result in an image with better dynamic range than the other. It seems that they will both produce the same results.



#7
Ron

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Most of the people I know who shoot B&W on their digital cameras shoot RAW+Jpeg normal with their picture control set to monochrome so that the review image is black and white. That allows them to judge light and contrast while they're shooting. They then save only the RAW images and convert them to B&W in post.

 

--Ron



#8
Merco_61

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Thanks for the feedback everyone. I thought that one conversion method might result in an image with better dynamic range than the other. It seems that they will both produce the same results.

That's not what I said...



#9
nikonFILMuser

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it is much EASIER to load with a Fine Grain B&W FILM -- Ha Ha ! 



#10
Merco_61

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Here is a comparison…

The first is SOOC.

gallery_1251_784_285089.jpg

 

 

The second is processed in post.

gallery_1251_784_995915.jpg


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#11
Brian

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On the above- it looks like the in-camera conversion is using a Gamma curve to preserve the shadow detail. It can do this while going from the 14-bit image to 8-bit JPeg.

 

The Post-Processed image looks more linear, the shadow detail of the tree line is gone- clipped to Black.

 

Hope you do not mind the link being posted-

 

Leica - Adding a "Gamma Curve" to a digital image: Thinking out Loud and Experiments | Cameraderie Photography Forum

 

I ended up writing my own RAW (DNG) software (in Fortran) to preserve the shadow details. I'm lazy- it Batch processed them.



#12
Brian

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it is much EASIER to load with a Fine Grain B&W FILM -- Ha Ha ! 

I miss Panatomic-X. The M Monochrom  reminds me of shooting it.

 

"nikonFILMuser- have you ever used a Pentax? And gone by the name Pete?

If not- you have a twin!



#13
Merco_61

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Brian, the curve is more or less linear. I processed it to mimic a shot I made from the same vantage point 35 years ago. 
 

The camera-processed probably uses a Gamma curve as the processing in the PanaLeica D-lux 7 is among the best I have seen. It is definitely not just linearly desaturated, unlike the in-camera monochrome conversions in our Nikons.

 

In the original photo, I developed HP4 in Ilfotec HC 1:47 @ 18˚C for 11 minutes according to my notes and copied the negative on EFKE K888 baryta medium hard. I think I used an Ai 24/2 lens, probably stopped down a bit. The photo was treated with Kodak Selenium toner 1:20 for around 8 minutes if I followed my usual routine.

 

The two shots are very similar, except that the trees and shrubs are much bigger now.



#14
fallout666

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best tips i got from youtube people and pros like peter hurly. always shot in color over black and white and shot in raw too. since give or ways to edit photo to be in black and white to get better photo from raw file. it also give choice if want to have color shot of it. you have color one for later to use. and what other people said go with them. since know more then me. also why shot raw is ability to go both ways if need to. since option of having color and black and white is best to have