B&W JPEGs: more than good enough.

Nice BW tones.
BW jpegs straight out of the Canon s90 aint to shabby either:

4643399297_672c61dc6a_o.jpg


4643399337_bdb695ab78_o.jpg


Todd
 
ferider said:
Screens don't show more than 8 bit per color. Also, in 800x600 or 1000x700 computer images, the JPG compression loss will not be visible. The M8 and M9 have deeper dynamic range though. If you are happy with JPG, it either means (a) you don't print, or (b) your exposures are always spot on :)

Just saying.

Roland.
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Feh. I print B&W all the time, both from jpg and RAW, and I have to say, most of the time I just don't give a rat's ass about dynamic range or clipped highlights or whatever. It's like saying Robert Johnson sucks because he wasn't recorded at 24 bits. There are a million ways to make a good picture, and maximizing resolution and dynamic range is only one of them. Another one is relaxing, not worrying about all that crap for a change, and working with what you've got. I find this liberating sometimes.

Maybe my favorite picture I took this year was wildly overexposed, with all the highlights blown to kingdom come. I realized my mistake and immediately took another picture with the correct exposure, but this one is better--and in part it's better PRECISELY because of the information lost by the poor exposure.

4466973823_47d4d9492e.jpg


Here's a great drawing by Rembrandt...it's in monochrome with very little bit depth.

rembrandt-child.jpg


My point is just that, if you can't do something interesting with more limited options, then you're not an artist. I'm not saying that you SHOULD ALWAYS limit yourself, or that limiting yourself is INHERENTLY SUPERIOR to keeping your options open. But denouncing the out-of-camera jpg is silliness. To some photographers, at some times, getting to say, "This is what I've got--what can I make of it?" is, at the very least, a highly useful exercise.
 
Back when I was very much struggling to convert digital color to B&W I ran across this photographer. He still is the only one that I think has a complete handle on B&W conversions (that is my opinion, so I'm not talking in absolutes). He doesn't have it available now (for free) but then he had a PDF file that was 5-6 pages and included, if I remember correctly, 20 layers. His process was very complicated, and probably still is, but he gets results. I found it to be too much time in front of the computer. Again, my opinion is that many contemporary photographers could benefit from his work. But that is just it, it is a lot of work. I hope you enjoy looking though his website:

http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/store/DVD_BlackandWhiteMastery.php
 
I've printed out 13 x 19 size D-Lux 4 Jpeg images shot in dynamic b/w mode at iso 400. Fine art images, matted and framed for some customers. Nothing but good feedback and they look amazing for a 10MP camera.
 
mabelsound said:
Feh. I print B&W all the time, both from jpg and RAW, and I have to say, most of the time I just don't give a rat's ass about dynamic range or clipped highlights or whatever. It's like saying Robert Johnson sucks because he wasn't recorded at 24 bits. There are a million ways to make a good picture, and maximizing resolution and dynamic range is only one of them. Another one is relaxing, not worrying about all that crap for a change, and working with what you've got. I find this liberating sometimes.

Maybe my favorite picture I took this year was wildly overexposed, with all the highlights blown to kingdom come. I realized my mistake and immediately took another picture with the correct exposure, but this one is better--and in part it's better PRECISELY because of the information lost by the poor exposure.

:

Here's a great drawing by Rembrandt...it's in monochrome with very little bit depth.

:

My point is just that, if you can't do something interesting with more limited options, then you're not an artist. I'm not saying that you SHOULD ALWAYS limit yourself, or that limiting yourself is INHERENTLY SUPERIOR to keeping your options open. But denouncing the out-of-camera jpg is silliness. To some photographers, at some times, getting to say, "This is what I've got--what can I make of it?" is, at the very least, a highly useful exercise.
Click to expand...

I agree with all you say. I am just opposing (1) the title of the thread, implying that JPGs are more than good enough generally, for example for people who do not seek the limitations you are exploring, and (2) the demonstration via online pictures as in your first post, that show nothing since computer screens are 8 bit limited, anyways.

I don't shoot digital. But my scanning flow is very dependent on as many bit/pixel as I can get, and I can imaging digital shooters needing this too, depending on the application. And if only, because exposure is a stop off, sometimes.

Roland.
 
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JSU said:
I will disagree, which is my opinion.
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That is certainly your right, and I'm glad you are not talking in absolutes. If you assume that I'm a Luddite, I do have 4 digital cameras and a complete, at least for my needs, inventory of editing programs and plug-ins which I use on a daily basis. But I have to say I don't enjoy the digital work flow very much so I try to limit my time spent in front of the computer. If I had a PS nerd at my disposal then I might be happy to shot digital exclusively or if I were a sports photographers, PS nerds, tech person that just have to have the next thing, etc.
 
Maybe I'm missing something here, but any of my p&s, or M8 put in b/w JPG mode can take photos as well as anything I've ever seen printed.

Exposed properly, a b/w JPG, can already out-resolve the eye. I've also done 2400/4800 scans to greyscale comparisons, and can see no difference, no matter how deep you magnify.

What the film folks here might be saying, is that they haven't yet seen grain or random smudges that you get from film, but that can be done too...

What you can't get from film, is grainless ISO 1600, which I can get from digital.
 
JPG is not equal JPG.

Depending on how a JPG is created, it can have been compressed with information loss or without. If you decide less information is OK, you can still decide how much to loose. Clearly, your setup will determine the final quality. No idea what the setup in M8 & M9 are, but without talking about the details, any statement on JPG quality is meaningless.

Then there is 8 bits per pixel/color in JPG vs. more, like 16 bits in TIF.

When properly exposed, 8 bits are good enough. But who does always expose perfectly ?
 
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right

right

The M8 doesn't have variable JPG settings, it's set internally on "good enough" :D

You still get 16 million colors or shades with 8-bit, regardless of the lossiness.

TIFFs can be 8-bit as well, and lossy as well, depends on settings.

On all of my scans, I have the JPG slider on 0 which is highest quality, least loss, biggest files, for Epson Scan.


ferider said:
JPG is not equal JPG.

Depending on how a JPG is created, it can have been compressed with information loss or without. If you decide less information is OK, you can still decide how much to loose. Clearly, your setup will determine the final quality. No idea what the setup in M8 & M9 are, but without talking about the details, any statement on JPG quality is meaningless.

Then there is 8 bits per pixel/color in JPG vs. more, like 16 bits in TIF.

When properly exposed, 8 bits are good enough. But who does always expose perfectly ?
Click to expand...
 
Correct on the TIFF compression, but I thought it was loss-less only (LZW).

With the M8/M9 in B+W mode, out of the JPG files, do you get 256 or 16 Million grey shades, Ted ?
 
rev 5

rev 5

TIFF rev 5 incorporated optional lzw encoding, but that encoding has nothing to do with lossless. The early TIFF specs allowed the use of embedding JPGs. The LZW is to minimize file size space, at the expense of compatibility and proc utilization.

btw, DNGs are a type of TIFF, as Adobe long ago acquired Aldus, one of the early TIF spec parters, along with MS.

Not sure about the M8 # of shades in B/W, but it's "enough" information.

Any more, and it would just be wasting file space.

When your're watching the news, do you care if your TV or stereo speaker can handle 40khz or 100khz? Neither you, nor I can hear sound that high.


ferider said:
Correct on the TIFF compression, but I thought it was loss-less only (LZW).

With the M8/M9 in B+W mode, out of the JPG files, do you get 256 or 16 Million grey shades, Ted ?
Click to expand...
 
mabelsound said:
Feh. I print B&W all the time, both from jpg and RAW, and I have to say, most of the time I just don't give a rat's ass about dynamic range or clipped highlights or whatever. It's like saying Robert Johnson sucks because he wasn't recorded at 24 bits. There are a million ways to make a good picture, and maximizing resolution and dynamic range is only one of them. Another one is relaxing, not worrying about all that crap for a change, and working with what you've got. I find this liberating sometimes.
Click to expand...

Completely agree. The only difference is that I choose the darkroom workflow to produce prints. :)
 
Mabelsound, Do you notice a difference in the quality of your B/W .jpgs when you use your Canon lens as opposed to the EP-2's standard lens? I use my Zuiko 50 /f1.8 on my E500 almost exclusively for this reason. Although I shoot raw and b/w jpg I usually use the jpg to work with and put my raw files on a separate drive as digital negative of sorts. I too love the quality of the b/w images I get.
_6046426.jpg

Oly E500 Zuiko 50/f1.8 AP 1/200 iso 1250
 
Michael Da Re said:
Mabelsound, Do you notice a difference in the quality of your B/W .jpgs when you use your Canon lens as opposed to the EP-2's standard lens? I use my Zuiko 50 /f1.8 on my E500 almost exclusively for this reason. Although I shoot raw and b/w jpg I usually use the jpg to work with and put my raw files on a separate drive as digital negative of sorts. I too love the quality of the b/w images I get.
View attachment 79428

Oly E500 Zuiko 50/f1.8 AP 1/200 iso 1250
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Not qualitative differences necessarily, but differences in character. The standard lens for me on the E-P2 is the Panasonic 20/1.7, which is up to par with some of my best rangefinder lenses!

Nice pic
 
Thanks for this thread. Have been wanting to work in B&W more on the digital side for a while now but needed to figure out options.

Set M9 to capture both a compressed DNG (18.3 MB each), and a B&W Basic JPEG (about 2.7 MB each). Tried the fine JPEG which are about 3.8 MB each, but looking closely couldn't see a visible difference. Also tried both sRGB and aRGB and didn't see a visible difference in the JPEGs there either. Now images are always shown in B&W on the camera screen. Good.

Set lightroom to treat multiple copies separately on import, so there is both the B&W JPEG and the color DNG shown in the collection. Would like to figure out how to separate (such as importing to different directories) so only the B&W are visible, but this is ok for now.

This will also provide a database of in-camera B&W JPEGs produced by the M9 to compare to any B&W conversions I may choose to do from the DNG file using Lightroom, Silver Efex Pro, or Photoshop.

I've also been using the M9 for sketches and taking some duplicate shots w/ the M4/TriX with same exposure. Hope to do more of this, but it's limited in use, especially if trying to capture people or a "moment" in the frame.
 
ederek said:
Thanks for this thread. Have been wanting to work in B&W more on the digital side for a while now but needed to figure out options.

Set M9 to capture both a compressed DNG (18.3 MB each), and a B&W Basic JPEG (about 2.7 MB each). Tried the fine JPEG which are about 3.8 MB each, but looking closely couldn't see a visible difference. Also tried both sRGB and aRGB and didn't see a visible difference in the JPEGs there either. Now images are always shown in B&W on the camera screen. Good.

Set lightroom to treat multiple copies separately on import, so there is both the B&W JPEG and the color DNG shown in the collection. Would like to figure out how to separate (such as importing to different directories) so only the B&W are visible, but this is ok for now.

This will also provide a database of in-camera B&W JPEGs produced by the M9 to compare to any B&W conversions I may choose to do from the DNG file using Lightroom, Silver Efex Pro, or Photoshop.

I've also been using the M9 for sketches and taking some duplicate shots w/ the M4/TriX with same exposure. Hope to do more of this, but it's limited in use, especially if trying to capture people or a "moment" in the frame.
Click to expand...

You should also explore the channel mixer option for 'treating' your color RAW files. Plus, the new Lightroom has besides a channel mixer some sliders to rise 'emphasis' in shadows, mid-tones, or highlights. These are very helpful. Add to that the ability to change a very linear H-D curve of digital captures with the curves function. Also, you can do some cutting and pasting and using the opacity slider in PS or PSE. You will be surprised how much better your B&W conversions will be. It is work but for something important you should probably at the very least try (to learn these functions) to maximize your final product.
 
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