After all my bitching and moaning about the 50mm f2.0 TTA lens I realized I really liked this shot and I should have just written some droll things about my personal life and then posted this photo along with it...

 

We were going to go to Germany but Putin made that harder. Too hard. There are a million people trying to leave Russia and they are heading straight for the E.U. Oh, and I'm pretty sanguine about saber rattling but when you have a crazy person with the ability to deploy hundreds or thousands of short range, tactical nuclear weapons at a moment's notice I'm not anxious to roll the dice and see how it's all going to play out. Added to that I'm low on iodine tablets....

We'll save a trip to Berlin and environs for the Spring. Maybe the Russian people will have figured out how to replace leaders by then. 

We switched plans and are now headed to Vancouver and B.C. at the last part of October and early November. I know it will be cold but realize that you're talking to a Texan who has just lived through the hottest Summer on record here in the central part of the state and the idea of being cold, or cold and wet, or just chilly seems enticing. Alluring. Luxurious. Reservations have been made. Plans solidified. Cameras not yet chosen. Might just turn into my first family vacation with nothing but an iPhone 14Pro as a camera...

Swimming continues apace. We've got three different coaches that are great at devising interesting and challenging workouts that keep the team continuously coming back for more. Lots of fast yards. Lots of inventive sets and cool, clean water to boot. Still trudging around town with a camera in my hands as well.

My fever seems to have broken as far as camera and gear acquisition goes. I cancelled an order for a camera last week and I've been indifferent to cameras ever since. We'll see how that plays out...

I was admonishing myself for buying a full set of Panasonic GH cameras last year and this year, including a GH6, but then one of my swim buddies called this week to see if I could produce some videos for his company's website and I was overjoyed to see that I had all the parts for great video work already in hand. Today I updated the GH6 firmware to version 2.2 which allows me to write files (photo and video) to a USB connected SSD drive. How fun!!!

I pulled out the Sennheiser wireless microphone gear this afternoon to refresh my knowledge and was thrilled to see that I'd removed the batteries before packing it all away last time I used it (around the Spring Break) so everything is still clean and working. No leaky battery issues.

Our shoot is a basic testimonial production for a geo-thermal product and we'll be doing it as a three camera scenario with a bunch of b-roll added. We have a scouting trip scheduled but we're still working on scheduling the principal videography and aiming for some time in the middle of the month. I'm heading out "street shooting" video with the GH6 for the next week or so just to get very familiar with the camera and the new capabilities. Might even shoot open gate in Pro Res. Exciting. 

Pissed off about the stock market. I liked it better when I felt richer. If we were back in the recent heady days of the market I'd already have that Hasselblad X2D ordered but now I'm trying to find coupons for pumpkin spice waffles at Trader Joe's. 

And wouldn't you know it? The minute I clicked on payment for our vacation flights and hotel my email started to blow up with requests to book projects right up until the day before we leave. It's the crazy universe.

An interesting lens that I would not buy again. It's not that bad. But it's not all unicorns and puffy clouds either. What lens? The new TTArtisan 50mm f2.0 for full frame.

 

I've always been a sucker for 50mm lenses and this tiny disappointment won't deter me from taking chances on cheap lenses in the future. But first, what is it?

TTArtisan, a Chinese maker of manual focus/manual exposure lenses for cameras introduced this lens earlier in 2022. For a few weeks it was sold out on all the popular sites but is now more widely available. It's a simple lens that's claim to fame is being the smallest, most compact, lightest 50mm f2.0 lens that covers full frame and is available in a wide range of mirrorless mounts. And it costs a whopping $69. 

In many regards it clicks the boxes I think are fun for a lens like this. It's all metal construction. The focusing ring is smooth and well placed. The aperture ring clicks nicely and with authority as you move it around. And the lens is tiny. It's almost capable of making a Leica SL seem light and carefree when this lens is attached. Almost.

It has six glass elements in five groups. It features 10 aperture blades for happier bokeh. And one of the amazing attributes of the lens is that even wide open it is exceptionally sharp in the center frame and at f5.6 it's sharp everywhere but in the extreme corners. So far, no really bad news. Right?

But it seems to have a fatal flaw. If you look at the sample images just below the product shots I've posted here you'll see that the corners have a green cast to them. I first saw it in a few of the images I made with the lens at its maximum aperture of f2.0 and I thought it would resolve as I stopped the lens down but that didn't happen. The green cast stuck around. And against lighter, non-blue/green backgrounds it's very noticeable. Noticeable enough that I would not use the lens at all for any sort of commercial work. Or, in fact, anything that a paying client might see. 

I tried using the various tools in the lens correction palette in Lightroom but I wasn't able to wrangle the green cast out. The Sigma fp has a lens optics correction sub-menu and in that sub-menu called "color shading." You can calibrate a lens by aiming it at a uniform subject (white card?) and clicking the AEL button. Then you can name the profile for each lens. There are four slots to fill. Doing that helped reduced the green corner cast but didn't take it out altogether. And, even if it did work it would only work in conjunction with the Sigma fp and not other cameras I might have wanted to use with the lens. Keeping in mind that I was testing the lens using raw files so it's possible that their might be a Jpeg automatic fix in some cameras out in the market. I just don't know about them. 

Given that the lens is small, cheap and mostly sharp I'll keep it around and play with it when I'm shooting black and white. When you go monochrome no one can see your corners color shift.... As though that's supposed to be some consolation. At any rate I marched around with the lens yesterday so you could see what it's all about since it got a bunch of buzz last month. 

One more thing. The lens has some geometric distortion and there is no current profile for the lens in Adobe apps. I found that moving the lens distortion slider in Lightroom Classic to minus five (- 5) cleared up the majority of the distortion but it's not a simple concave or convex distortion pattern; there are some slight wavy lines that remain in spite of the overall correction.

If you haven't bought one of these but were considering it and asking my advice I'd probably steer you clear of it. That is, unless you were vitally interested in the getting the smallest and cutest 50mm lens currently on the market for mirrorless cameras of all kinds. Then it's between you and your camera. 

I'll test it one more time with a different camera body and also use the Jpeg format instead of raw to see if one of my other cameras can auto correct for that color shading glitch. No promises of success. But, still, $69.

TTArtisan uses metal lens caps that screw into the filter rings.

Some people absolutely hate them. I'm ambivalent. 

On one hand I like the way they look. But on the other hand I mostly just use them for 

protection in camera bags, etc. and when I'm out shooting the cap comes off for the day

and lives in a pocket till we're through with our adventures in photography. 

It's not like I'm putting it on and pulling it off dozens of times in an 

afternoon. So, there's that. 

this was my best correction for the dreaded green corners. 

But notice: the lens is sharp and well behaved otherwise. f5.6

See the green in the lower right and all along the left side of the frame?

Me too. 

I tried working out the green with a radial adjustment but only succeeded in 

turning the green to a darker teal.

Man. that guy has baggy pants...

Should probably eat more. Send cake.

(no. please don't...).

Obvious green cast in the bottom corners. 

OMG. So much green cast in the bottom left corner. 

Masked on the right by the green of the building trim.

Perhaps a taunt about my lens buying habits. 

Or a more general message about clowns. 

At least they are not mimes.... (See the movie: Shakes the Clown). 

visible green cast in all corners except where it is masked by blue sky in the top

right corner. Untenable to me. 

And this is the most obvious example of all. Green all along the left side of the frame

with emphasis on the bottom corners. And extending well into the frame.

Not a great performance. 

Glad I'm not looking for affiliate cash.

Fun, cheap flash. Godox Lux Senior.

 I wrote the other day that I liked flashes that featured the older, "automatic" settings which use a sensor on the flash to measure exposure. My luck with TTL flash has mostly been hit or miss. My keeper rate when using manual flash has always been much higher. And when I'm doing quick P.R. or event work I tend to work almost always in manual. But in my experience "automatic" modes are somewhere right in the middle of the mix. Not always perfect but usually closer to the "right" exposure than TTL even if it's not as good as a well tested manual setting. 

TTL flash fans will probably jump in to say that with high dynamic range cameras and flexible RAW files they've never had an issue with TTL and can quickly fix photos in post. Sure, I can fix a few dozen under exposed flash pictures in post but I sure don't want to go through four or five hundred photos, correcting each one for over and underexposures. Not if I can help it...

With fully manual flash exposure you are basically just solving simple math. Guide numbers work well. If the flash puts out a certain amount of power and you are a certain distance from your subject you can shoot hundreds of frames with little or no variation in flash output or exposure. Much easier to batch process after the shoot. 

So why Automatic? Because at heart I'm pretty lazy and wish the flash would do most of the work. With this in mind and with the prices of Leica dedicated TTL flashes equal to an international airfare I decided to give a new, funny looking flash a try. It clicked two boxes: It's intriguing and it's relatively cheap. $119. 

The flash is a Godox Lux Senior and it folds down for travel but when you are ready to use it you engage the circular, metal reflector by fanning it out, pop up the flash tube and you are ready to shoot. It's not an exceptionally powerful flash but I intend to use mine on camera and direct. There is only one way to bounce this flash and that's to use the included sync cord and take the flash off camera and point it up toward the ceiling. Not interested in that for the uses I have in mind...

I got two of these yesterday and took five minutes to read the instruction manual. It's pretty straightforward since there are no custom functions or extra "features" to screw up your progress toward simple lighting. The units come with internal, non-interchangeable lithium batteries which are charged via an included USB cable. I've only opened up the box and charged one of the two units. It took about three and a half hours to hit a full charge. 

When the flash is plugged into a USB charger and starts charging the ready light on the back lights up red. When charging is complete the same light switches to green. If you use the flash for a while and want to check and see how much battery power you have left you can turn off the flash and "quick touch" the test button/ready light button once and you'll get a slow flashing series of indicators. Four green pulses tells you that the flash is at 75-100% charged, three pulses tells you that the flash battery is at 50-75% charged and so on. It's not as accurate as a numerical indication (ex: 73 %) but it does let you know in a more general way how you're doing on battery juice. 

The automatic feature is primitive but straightforward and easy enough to use. It's based around an exposure within 4 meters from the direct flash. The manual tells us that it's calibrated for correct exposure in that range when used at ISO 100 and f2.8. It takes no great math skills to understand that you could also set ISO 200 and f4.0 or 400 and f5.6 or 800 and f8.0. I tried all of these combinations using the flash on a Leica SL2 and they all worked just fine. I've only taken 20 or 30 test shots but they are exactly what I was expecting. Since the flash and camera don't communicate at all (other than to trigger the flash) you can "drag" the shutter as slow as you'd like to balance out ambient light and flash ratios. 

I like Godox products. I've purchased many over the years and have yet to regret any purchase. I was hesitant to buy this wonderfully nostalgically designed unit for only one reason; I want to use the flash for a fundraising gala one of my clients puts on every year at the Four Seasons Hotel. I normally shoot between 500 and 600 candid shots during the cocktail hour, the VIP reception, and with casual groupings after the show concludes. I have no fears whatsoever about shooting direct flash but I do have a well grounded fear of running out of battery charge. 

I almost passed on the Lux Senior since the battery is built in and can't be exchanged during an evening shoot. But then I looked again at the price ($119, free shipping) and realized that I could buy two of the them, set them up identically, and be covered for the full event. Being extra cautious I'll bring along a USB Anker battery pack in case I want to put the first, exhausted unit on to charge in order to continue to have a back-up source. And being incredibly paranoid I'm sure to have a manual Godox YN-XXX flash in the bag, sitting in the corner of the ballroom, just in case everything else goes to hell. 

So far the flash is working perfectly and I like the general look of the light coming off the round reflector. 

I can't wait to hear the comments from the photo aficionados at the gala. The nostalgia factor is palpable. 

Taking the flash with me on a walk today to see if I can do some fill light out in the bright sun. The SL2 syncs at 1/250th so we'll see what we can get. And no. There is no HSS on this flash.

Sigma Contemporary 30mm f1.4 lens is a nice "fast normal" lens for the Leica APS-C cameras (TL2 and CL).

It's been a weird camera week. I have a good friend who is a very bad influence when it comes to wasting money on unneeded camera purchases. He made a great case to me for Leica Q cameras and before I knew it I was off looking at various versions of the camera at my favorite Leica dealer's website. By the end of the day on Saturday I'd tracked down the one I thought I wanted. It was a minty Q-P (a stealth Q that came out in late 2018 with a matte black finish, no red dot (or indeed, dot of any kind...) and a revised, quieter shutter. The package would come with three batteries for the camera as well as all the usual stuff. It looked so cool. And it was a bit less than $4,000. The cherry on the transaction? The camera had just come back from a Wetzlar, Germany Leica Clean, Lube and Adjust visit. 

I was excited about it but also felt a little uneasy. I've already spent a small fortune on Leica stuff this year and I think my Calvinist upbringing was playing havoc with my guilt gland (not being a hedge fund manager or attorney I've never had mine removed). When I woke up on Sunday morning I was feeling some resistance to my unplanned purchase. I talked it over with my much more rational (and patient) son and by the end of our conversation he convinced me that while the camera might be really neato there might be some emotional value to resisting the desire for yet another material purchase and that maybe the exercise of restraint would have surprising positive benefits. 

By Monday morning I had (for the first time in years) actual anxiety about a camera purchase. What the heck was I thinking? Did I think I really needed yet another Leica? Or for that matter did I even need another camera? Then there was the obvious bump in my buying logic when I remembered just how awkward the 28mm focal length is for me. Not a focal length I'd choose for myself unless my back was up against the wall and a client needed the shot. And the Leica Q features a fixed, permanently attached 28mm lens.... yikes.

Finally I considered the opportunity cost of spending the money on yet another luxury item when I could invest in something better while the market stays down. Maybe, over time, I could turn the cost of one Leica Q-P into an amount equal to 2 Q-Ps if I just plunked the cash into my Roth account. 

In the end I called the dealer and cancelled the sale. They were gracious and helpful. I felt relieved. It's wasn't the cost, per se, so much as it was the irrationality of buying a camera with a beautiful body wrapped around a failing (for me) focal length lens. 

Instead of another camera I reconciled myself to optimizing my current Leica CL APS-C system. I'm a big fan of the Sigma Contemporary series of lenses and Sigma have started delivering the really cool, smaller than full frame, Contemporary lenses in L mount configurations. I bought two of the lenses earlier this year. The one's I've been using are the 56mm f1.4 and the 18-50mm f2.8 zoom lens. They're both great.  I wanted to add the 30mm f1.4 to the mix and then, once its been assimilated into the mix, I'll grab a 16mm f1.4. 

I ordered the 30mm f1.4 around the same time as the Q-P and the lens arrived on Sunday afternoon. I stuck it on a CL body this morning and shot a few test shots with it. I had a version of this lens once before when I was deep into the m4:3 cameras so I already had an idea of its potential but I wanted to make sure I got a good copy in the L mount before we got too far down the road. The 30mm is the angle of view equivalent of a 45mm lens for full frame. Just about perfect for lots and lots of stuff. 

The logic for fleshing out the CL system is that it's pretty much the perfect travel camera system for me and I'll be doing some traveling this Fall. I can fit two camera bodies, the zoom lens, and the three primes into one very small shoulder bag. The system is lightweight. And the Sigma lenses are pretty darn good. With the fast maximum apertures and my nerves of steel I don't feel the need for holiday flash units nor do I feel the need to travel with a tripod. 

Here are some test images from the CL + Sigma 30mm f1.4 Contemporary lens. It was on sale. I'll keep it. 

Just thought I'd write this to at least direct attention to the reality that I can exercise some restraint. But...Damn....it's hard. 

that's a RED truck.

One must now be vigilant when using the public sidewalks as legions of people on Segways, having not yet learned to walk, are zooming around with impunity. Tragic. 

Single file? That's for suckers...

MM is an instructor at the University of Texas at Austin.

I hear he also dabbles in movie acting. 

I am always a bit cautious around vans. I always get a 

Hannibal Lector vibe around them. 

the lens handles blue sky. That's a good thing. 

It was possible to do flash photography even back in the "dark" ages of manual flashes and coiled sync cords. Honest.

Kirk covering Texas Republicans Election Night Watch Party in 1978.

We used to do math in our heads....

And those ARE my dress up jeans.

 

You can keep your fancy TTL flashes. I've been searching for years for a cheap "automatic" flash that is "camera agnostic." I think I just found one and it's so cute.

I'm not a fan of TTL flash automation. I'm also not a fan of "flash unit bloat." Adding more and more stuff to flashes doesn't make them better it makes them more complicated, less reliable and much more "siloed." 

When I started shooting stuff with my two older Leicas one of my complaints was the paucity of good, affordable flashes for the brand. Sure, they have two models of TTL dedicated complexity starting at $600+ per flash but there was nothing else out there by third party makers that meshed with those cameras. 

What I really wanted was a flash that had the old fashioned metering mode that included a little metering "eye" on the front of the flash which would measure the amount of light bouncing back from a subject and shut of automatically when the flash senses that it had delivered the right dose of quick light. This was the predecessor of TTL and it has advantages.

The flash is not required to be "dedicated" to one generation of cameras from one maker. It can be used interchangeably between all cameras that have flash sync. 

The automatic operation doesn't depend on a series of pre-flashes to assess the correct exposure as do modern TTL flashes. And those pre-flashes are a real nuisance since they cause some people to blink and others to assume that the pre-flash was the "real" flash and so stop paying attention to their pose or the direction of their expression. Preflashes are a tool of Satan and will soon be completely replaced by camera makers with even more expensive flash exposure measuring tools that incorporate Lidar. Or something similar. 

The only times I use flashes where automatic exposure is helpful are at events where I am photographing individuals and small groups and also trying to make candid photographs in the same kinds of locations. I have cameras and flashes that work together to do TTL flash but I never find the final output to be at all consistent. In fact, I think the last time I was able to use TTL flash with any consistency was when using a Nikon SB-800 and a Nikon D700 camera. Since then everything has been decidedly downhill. 

And, coincidentally, the worst TTL flash I ever owned was the Nikon SB-900 which had a thermal cutout switch that temporarily (10 minutes? 20 minutes?) killed the flash after a handful of flashes. It protected itself at all costs even if one of those costs was my performance of the job. Thank God for fully manual flashes in the back-up bag....

I wanted to use a couple of Leica SLs for the job I did in Santa Fe this Spring but so much of the three day conference depended on making candids and quickly posed group shots with flash and I didn't think fully manual "guide number" flash would be quick enough so I switched to the Panasonic cameras with dedicated TTL flashes. But even there I was having to ride the exposure compensation dial to get the consistency I wanted. I spent weeks before the show searching for an "automatic" (NOT TTL) flash I could buy but didn't find one. 

Today I did yet another search and the flash shown here popped up. It has two exposure modes. It has manual, with a quick and nifty exposure reference scale on the rear dial to help get you in the ballpark. And it has automatic. You set the lens aperture and then you match the aperture on the dial on the back of the flash. You set your ISO. You are done. You go shoot.  

I read as much as I could about the unit. I love the retro/ James Bond laser weapon expanding flash reflector. I love the look of the bare bulb in the middle of the reflector. When you finish with the flash the reflector folds down, the bulb is retracted and there is a panel that hinges down to cover the stuff. Looks as though you have a cell phone from the late 1990s in your hand when its packed to go.

The camera has a built-in battery that's 1700 mA and Lithium Ion. It's specced to deliver 150 full power flashes from a single charge. It's rechargeable via USB.  There is a single contact at the bottom of the hot sync. No TTL dedication whatsoever. It even comes with a cord in case you need to sync the flash to the camera via a sync port.

The flash is called a Godox Lux Senior. There is a Lux Junior. I'm not a fan of that one because the flash tube guts are too close to the camera. It seems it would be a "red eye" magnet.

The Godox Lux Senior retails for $120. I think it looks glamorous. I have a big gala coming up in mid-November and I'm intent on using this flash with the Leica SL or SL2 cameras. My only (and I mean my ONLY) hesitation is that the battery is not removable so you can't carry a spare. In the past I would have declared this to be a "deal-killer" but instead, with a more flexible approach, I just ordered two of the flashes. If one won't make it through the night I'll have an identical back-up. And, during the dinner break I can always use a battery bank for a quick recharge in the camera bag. All good. 

Should be here on Wednesday so I'll test and report back --- just in case there is a gotchas I haven't uncovered. My audience at the gala will be attorneys and spouses who are mostly over 50 years old. Many over 60. They'll love the retro vibe. And it will be fun to include the flashes as part of the working outfit.

We could do worse. 

 Images made available from Godox. I thought they were fun as well. No affiliation or special relationship. The only thing my company and Godox have in common is my Visa card...

Coming to grips with black and white photography in the current digital age. No facts; just opinions.

Stand back as we open a potentially explosive can of worms. Let's talk about making black and white images with modern, color digital cameras. It's all in the wrist?

I don't have a constant, "go to" style that I'm relentlessly following as a photographer. Some days I like images with deeply saturated colors and other days I like ephemeral pastels. Some things just have to be in color while at other times I love the classic look of a black and white photograph. I guess my point is that I don't just have a "dog in the hunt", I have a whole pack of dogs and they're dragging me in all different directions. But I suppose that's what I have come to like about photography.

Case in point: Friday I tried my best to post a completely monochrome bit of blog. But that afternoon I walked by a shop and in the window was a mannequin dressed in bright red leather. I tried a black and white frame but everything just looked like gray mush. I shot it in a "vivid" color setting on the camera and loved the punch of the color. But on the same venture out I took a black and white portrait of "Casino" that I really liked. I'd say I'm positing an argument for flexibility but the reality is that I'm always a bit torn whichever side of the color versus monochrome fence I'm currently straddling. 

In my early photo career we shot mostly black and white. It was a question of economics. Black and white film was much cheaper. Developing one's own film made economic sense at a point where there was always more time on hand than money. And printing black and white in a darkroom was magical. Part of the magic was that you could emerge from the red glow of the safelight lit darkroom with some thing tangible in your hands. Proof of your labor. A physical souvenir of your adventures with a camera...

In the early days of my work as a commercial photographer the world was transitioning from a black and white advertising eco-system to a full color workplace. My first feature photo for Texas Monthly Magazine was black and white. And everything after that was color. But the sentimentality of those carefree black and white days permanently colored my idea of what true photography was supposed to be all about. Even when that was no longer true. 

Lately, with more time to spend on personal projects, I've leaned a bit harder into making photographs that start out and finish as black and white images. Almost all of them are destined for life on the web but some are good enough (for me) to also make the jump to black and white prints. 

In the process of trying to emulate the black and white work I did with a number of different types of black and white films, across a handful of different cameras (pre-digital), I've learned  a few things about how to best capture and process images taken with a color digital camera when my overriding intention is the creation of black and white images. 

I'd like to share them here. 

But first a quick discussion of how I like my black and whites to look....and styles of which I am not fond.

I hate flat, milky gray images. I want good blacks and crisp highlights and, if I can manage it I want elevated contrast in the mid-tones. I'm never trying to achieve "a long and virtuous" range of gray tones at the expense of contrast and implied acutance. I don't desperately try to hold on to the last vestiges of shadow detail in most images because, well, in most images it just isn't important. Some deep, details shadow can be visually comfortable.

When I make portraits in black and white I want flesh tones to be believable. There's tendency today by photographers to make skin tones as crunchy and contrasty as hell. Almost as if a legion of shooters got their "clarity" slider stuck at 200%. And dark. Everyone is processing their  already crunchy skin tones very darkly. Maybe it's an attempt to keep whatever highlights are left from blowing out as a result of the breathtaking overall contrast....

I dislike black and white landscape photographs with bald, detail-less skies. 

What I like is a sense of tonal balance with judicious addition of snappy midrange contrast. I want something in the frame, somewhere to go black. Not dark with detail. Just Moriyama Black. 

You've probably seen enough of my black and white work to understand what I mean so let's move on to how I try to get there.

I've toyed with the idea of getting a monochrom Leica Q2 or even a Leica M Monochrom but I just can't go there. The idea of being landlocked away from color if I want it is just too great for me. And to spend $6K+ for a specialty rig is more than my middle class upbringing can stomach. I've borrowed monochrom cameras from time to time; when wealthier friends are willing to indulge me, and I find them too constrictive. I want more wiggle room for my vision of how black and white should be. And, to complicate things, my vision changes from time to time. What works in one season seems like a roadblock to seeing in another. 

I've decided that it's best for me to explore the cameras I like to shoot with and experiment towards making black and whites that make me happy with those particular cameras. 

Here's my basic formula, arrived at by compensation for the Leica SL's (the 2015 model 601) very, very limited menu of file adjustments:  I go into the Jpeg settings and I am confronted with controls that don't allow fine-tuned adjustment. No "baby steps" just big, lumbering jumps. I have the following things I can work with: Contrast. Sharpness. Saturation. Noise. That's it. Unlike my (now departed) Fuji X100V cameras there is not an endless array of micro adjustable choices with which to fine tune. Just those four parameters. 

I start with the most important step which is to make the files monochrom which is one of the settings in saturation settings. My second step, regardless of the shooting conditions or subjects, is to set the contrast to medium high. Medium high is the ONLY choice between the middle setting (normal) and "High" contrast. I'm afraid of going too high with the contrast because I am mostly shooting Jpegs and if I trip over the line and over-charge the image with contrast it's hard to come back from. 

My next step is to turn up the sharpening which has the effect of actually introducing more acutance to the image and does bump up contrast a bit in the mid-tones. Sharpness also gets the "Medium High" setting. Any higher and I start to get the dreaded halos... No one wants the dreaded halos. 

Finally I turn the noise reduction down to low. That's as low as it will go. If there was an "off" setting I'd gladly try that because grain/noise doesn't affect my particular vision of black and white imagery. In fact, for the most part, the more grain the better. 

These settings are a good starting point for me with my two absolute favorite cameras. When I pull a file into Lightroom, which is my preferred post process application, I go a little deeper and nearly always add more mid-range contrast via the clarity slider. I don't make pixie moves with the slider. No 4s or 5s. I start at +25 and go up from there. If the image is highly detailed I also lean on the texture slider but I'm a bit more judicious there and rarely go higher than +12 or +15.

Finally, if the blacks are too weak (not usually an issue) I tweak the "Dehaze" control and add just enough to make the deep tones deeper and richer. 

This all seems to work for me. You'll need to adjust to taste. And this is where I go when I'm using the older Leica camera models. Mostly because their range of adjustments is quite limited and the controls are so coarse. 

In the CL and SL2 models there are a few more options. The biggest one being the addition of a profile called Monochrom HC. The "HC" of course standing for high contrast. But I still find myself adding contrast in the profile menu. With those two cameras I also find that using the shadow and highlight sliders  in post can help me get nicer flesh tones without destroying the overall contrast I work at getting in a picture. 

I'm not into subtle moves with sliders in Lightroom. I'll jack the shadow slider to +50 or +60 and the highlight slider to "minus the same amount.." There is one last slider that I use to add pop to an image and that's the white slider. Not white balance but just "white." If an image looks too mushy and too gray in flesh tones or on a main subject I increase the white slider and it adds some pop without destroying to the top of the curve which is being tamed by the highlight slider. 

In some images, if the nature of the subject evokes a 1960's, 1970's feeling, I'll add some grain to the overall image. But lately I've just depended on using higher and higher ISOs to add overall noise to a file. Kind of a mini-rebellion against overly "clean" images. Again, I'm sure it's a sentimental throwback to my old style of film era black and white were even ISO 400 films, developed in Rodinal, had obvious grain when printed large. 

Since I'm mostly shooting in Jpeg for myself I try to get as much done as I can in the camera and not depend too much on "saving" images in post. If I screwed up while shooting I toss the file in the trash rather than try spending hours rescuing what, many times, turns out to be a boring image anyway. 

In my own way, by shooting black and white Jpegs I am cutting off any path to surrender to color after the fact. So, in that sense I get what Michael Johnston is saying about banishing the choice. Being fickle I might want to see color later. If that happens my only recourse is to saddle up and head back to reshoot but with the camera set up for color. It's relatively rare for me to shoot something in color and then want to make a black and white image from the file. My brain isn't really wired to go in reverse like that. 

Every camera is different and requires its own formula for your kind of black and white. But I would suggest that a good starting point is always to bring back the pop we used to get printing a juicy negative on grade three paper by adding contrast. And especially contrast in the mid-tones. That's where it makes the difference. 

Shooting in Raw and then deciding on a direction is too safe. A compromise between the fear of losing the potential of a file and not having a clear enough vision while actually pushing the shutter to make a choice. But that's just the way my brain works...

 

A Nod to Going Wider and Working in Dedicated Black and White.

 

Okay. I couldn't help myself. It's red. All red.

All photos done with the Leica CL and the 17mm f1.4 TTArtisan lens. Nice for working the streets.