Joseph Tainter wrote:
Let's say you shoot on a Pentax DSLR, with the intention at the start of
converting the image to grayscale. You shoot with a red or yellow or
green filter, with the final B&W image in mind. One shoots in Raw. After
converting to TIFF, then converting to grayscale, will the effect of,
say, a red filter still be present in the image? Or will the white
balance just correct for it at the time the image is shot?
If the answer is that the effect of the filter will be corrected by
white balance, then much of my interest in ever doing digital B&W
photography disappears.
Joe
It depends on the range of colors that you are starting out with. If
the colors that you are trying to mute or enhance differ highly in
luminance from the other colors, then its useful to use a filter. This
allows the more muted colors to be captured with less noise, since you
are not simply multiplying their luminance values in a digital sense but
through actual exposure. So if you want to darken a sky, it would work
better to use a filter than to try to do this in Photoshop. The
tonality range for the filter based approach would be higher.
rg
