Superb example of BW conversion. (I like the shot very much as well.)
But on my monitor, the highlights and shadows are detailed and right at
the ends of the spectrum, the midtones are nicely separated and
beautifully rendered. Excellent. Would love to see it printed on Epson
Velvet Fine Art Paper in a 2200.
Paul
On Aug 26, 2005, at 12:26 AM, Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote:
On Aug 25, 2005, at 7:44 PM, Shel Belinkoff wrote:
... The problem with
using post processing techniques is that the results don't follow the
way
real B&W film behaves, so colors and tonality are conbverted
arbitrarily,
IOW, how you want them to look not necessarily the way B&W film would
record them. That, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, depending
on the
result you want. However, it requires that you become familiar with a
number of techniques so you can decide which will provide the results
you
desire.
...
Finally, from what I've seen using three different digi cameras, even
if
you're shooting in B&W mode, the filters don't seem to work quite the
same
as when shooting film.
I wouldn't say that "colors and tonality are converted arbitrarily"
... rather, I spent a great deal of time learning how to use Curves,
HSV and Channel Mixer layers together, over the past several years, so
that I can get the spectral response and gamma curve that precisely
fits what I had in mind when I took the picture.
The issue is that different B&W film and developer combinations have
different spectral responses, gamma curves, etc. If what you are
looking to do is emulate a particular B&W film and do it as
automatically as possible, yes, plug-ins like the ones from
TheImagingFactory.com and digitalsilver, as well as others, have
mapped those spectral responses nicely in a black box implementation.
However, all they're doing, really, is manipulating the balance of the
channels, much like using the Channel Mixer or one of the several ways
of using HSV adjustment layers, Calculation layers, etc.
I tend to prefer to work the tonalities myself, rather than trust to a
plug-in, because I want to be able to achieve a particular set of
response curves and reproduce it with a wide variety of capture
settings reliably, and because I want to understand precisely what the
transformation performed was. I also don't like paying for additional
software to do the work that I can figure out for myself in a short
amount of experimentation time.
BTW: Since we're talking B&W here, I posted a half-rez version of one
of my recent People & Portrait series photos today for folks on my
other list. It was taken with the FA35/2 AL lens, and gives a better
feel for what a print from this image might look like compared to what
the web gallery photo normally shows. If you want to take a look at
it...
Standard gallery photo:
http://homepage.mac.com/ramarren/photo/PAW5/32.htm
Half-rez version:
http://homepage.mac.com/ramarren/photo/PAW5/large/32-half.jpg
Camera: Pentax *ist DS + FA35/2 AL
Exposure settings: ISO 200 @ f/2 @ 1/25 sec, Av mode
Godfrey
