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.
6 comments:
Ohhh,,I will have to try that. I have always enjoyed your B&W images. Personally I prefer creating B&W images over colour. Currently I do all my B&W conversions in Bridge and PS. However I really like what I get out of the GH5 with a little tweaking in a C setting.
Now get out and have some fun in the night with your B&W! It's one of my guilty pleasures lol. Thankfully it's still pretty safe here in Calgary. Sure we do have a small area that could be dodgy but for the most part you are safe.
Eric
Very nice.
Paul Simon should have known better. "Everything looks >best< in black and white".
I have been taking a number of photos with the intention of producing a B&W final image. I will shoot RAW+JPEG in Monochrome. The RAW photos are ultimately displayed as color in LrC. I find that I prefer the shades of JPEGs to RAWs converted to monochrome from one camera, and the opposite to be true for another camera. I did come across RAW-to-Monochrome presets in LrC - but there are almost too many of them to make a decision about which one to use. I like the results you are getting. Please post more B&W photos.
Some RAW files will really shine after working carefully into a B&W conversion. And they will be very different from a color edit.
An an artist's rendering of James Dean, but who is the lady on the right in this wall mural?
Post a Comment