I showed this image a few weeks ago in its original color rendering. It was a quick snap I made with a Leica M240 rangefinder camera coupled with a Carl Zeiss 35mm f2.0 Biogon lens in M mount. I liked the enormous graphic on the wall of a favorite coffee shop in Montreal and so, after a donut and a cup of coffee, I stopped to make a photo on my way out.
While the color image is good in its own right, and there are things about it that interest me, I thought it would be interesting to see how I would like it in black and white. In the past I've used the HSL tools in PhotoShop or Lightroom to make a conversion but recently Adobe added dozens (maybe over 100) presets to their develop menu. Many of them are for black and white.
I selected one after scrolling through and seeing what each one could do. I liked the tonal rendering but, like most black and white images which are conversions from color, I thought it could use a bit more contrast. Especially in the mid-ranges. So I took advantage of the clarity slider to tweak the image to my taste (which may not be the same as your taste...).
The image holds up well. I tweaked it a bit further for publication on the blog. I noticed that sometimes B&W files can look a bit dark on the blog. I pulled up the brightness just a tad using curves.
That's the long and short of it. But I must say that I really like the way the ZM 35mm f2.0 renders tones and sharpness. It's a really nice lens for M mount cameras. Lots of fine detail without the over-crispy-ness that some modern lenses deliver.
I look forward to playing with more and more files and converting them. I'll probably stop shooting black and white in the camera and settle on raw files. More control and the addition of A.I. Noise Reduction in LR which is only available right now for Raw files.
Monochrome madness continues.
