B&w

Mark, I have not used an X100, but every other digital camera I've used offers the ability to shoot raw but set the LCD to BW. Choose raw and then set jpg to BW. The software ignores the jpg settings for the raw files but not for the LCD. That's been my standard approach forever.

I think your work will be easier and your results better with Lightroom (or similar) and raw. I think you'll find the processing headroom very welcome. I don't know about printing from Irident or other tools, but LR's print module is excellent.

John
 
Thanks Chris and John!

Chris's tutorial and John's assistance will be explored this afternoon, with my gratitude. All of my color digital has been shot with RAW, and knowing now that I can set the LCD to b/w for shooting purposes is terrific!

Again, my thanks to both for your input!

m
 
Mark, the X100 I always shoot jpegs: they're so good. I occasionally press the raw button for a challenging shot. That's not disagreeing with johnwolf's point just above. Depends on what you're shooting. I haven't tried the X100 black and white jpegs much. I presume they're also very good. Lightroom is really very easy for most things. When I next acquired digital Leicas being a member here I had to shoot raw. But I was scared. I was scared of the unfinished product, scared of 1s and 0s, and the long hours post-processing. And here, if I'd stuck to jpegs with an M9 I'd have felt so guilty and inadequate. Most shots I leave alone 'cause they're no good. The decent ones I rarely spend more than 20 seconds tweaking a few adjustments.
 
Thanks Richard,

I have the original X100, not the S or T, and I always leave it in JPG black and white - or have to this point. For my needs it does remarkably well in a wide variety of lighting situations. I just went thru Chris's tutorial (Thanks Chris. Well done, clear, concise. Excellent teaching style!) and am going to be happy to give that process a shot, and I just set my XP2 as Johnwolf suggested (Thanks John!), but it is gray, gloomy, murky, and rainy here right now, so I'll content myself with learning as much as I can from all of you here, and take the cameras for a spin in slightly brighter weather.

Thanks again to everyone,

Mark

https://www.markapplingfisher.com
 
It is possible to use raw files with Fujifilm cameras and Adobe products and never see a color image from the time you pick up the camera and first view it on-screen in post-production.

Of course the raw image always contains all the color information. But you can avoid viewing a color version at every step.

This is not unique to Fujifilm and Adobe.
 
Looking at the postings here, the similar postings to Roland’s challenge and just talking to friends and cruising the web, it looks like Lightroom as the stand alone and Silver Efex Pro as the add on are the most popular tools for producing b&w images from digital files. There is a lot of support for Iridient, especially from Fuji users. Even though successive generations of Lightroom have improved in their handling of Fuji files and significantly reduced the gap, Iridient still has a slight lead in the Fuji file fine detail department. Although Capture One is a major processing program with a number of controls aimed specifically at b&w, it doesn’t seem to have the broad base of b&w users that Lightroom does. The one thing that surprised me was absence of PhotoNinja users. It works well with a variety of raw files including Fuji in both color and b&w and has an excellent set of presets that, while they are straightforward and not gimmicky, provide a variety of interpretations that can be fine tuned for a specific image. My guess is that its nomenclature and controls are different enough from the majority of processing programs that folks back off before they really explore and learn it. The second surprise was the lack of mention of Raw Therapee, a program that works well with both Bayer and Fuji files and is FREE.

The one thing that became obvious was how different the wet darkroom and the computer darkroom are. When you put a negative in an enlarger in a wet darkroom, there is no positive image, no preview. You decide whether you like the image soft or harsh, light or dark. In the digital darkroom there is a preview, and some folks settle for that. Sometimes that's quite acceptable. Other times - not so much...
 
Bill I have an MM (original) and it is the only digital B&W I have really warmed up to but I find photoshop CS6 to be the closest to working in a traditional wet darkroom. I have both LR and SE and I really don't like either.
 
One more thought on this subject that has not been discussed. It seems to me that lens choice can have a significant impact on our intention to produce a "film look" and on conversion in general. Modern lenses on today's digital make it harder to get away from the cleanness of digital and approach the naturalness of film.

The photo below was taken with the original Voigtlander 25 Snapshot on my X-Pro1, a combo I love. It's not a super old lens, but it's LTM and probably from the 70s or earlier. I'm not suggesting it's a film-like image, but to my eye it gets closer to the more organic look some of us seek in our conversions. And I feel that's largely due to the lens. I have shots from my GR and MM with Zeiss lenses against the same wall in similar light, and they are very different.

John

31533256824_cec86f5cb1_b.jpg
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
You're probably right that it doesn't matter. I had issues in the long ago past, but have not tried it in a decade. Virtually all devices can display an sRGB image reasonably accurately.
Click to expand...

Interesting experiment this afternoon. 🙂 I quickly borrowed a number of machines with various browsers and pulled up this image:

http://www.demare.me/gallery/var/albums/coney1.jpg

I picked that one because I know it's totally greyscale, no color at all, and it's a recent clean scan, and on my monitor on the home machine I can see the details in the right-hand shadows easily.

Chrome and Chromium (cousins), Firefox, Seamonkey, and IceWeasel (cousins), Internet Explorer, and some no name ones on tablets and smart phones. Mostly office type PCs using Windows and one LibCad workstation (Linux). Most machines had more than one browser.

The interesting thing was that there was a LOT of difference from machine to machine and monitor to monitor and little if any from browser to browser!

Most of the systems had the shadow detail totally down in the mud!

The only color cast change I saw was on one machine when you dragged the window from one monitor to another. It had a weak amber hue on one and a weak bluish hue on the other.

Also, I never post BW images that are truly neutral. I impart a slight color tone to all of them, just as I did in the darkroom. A grayscale image cannot be toned!
Click to expand...

Very true. I tend to think of a B&W image as being totally neutral, with untoned grains of silver on wet prints, and black ink only on inkjet and magazine/newspaper prints. I just realized that I don't think I've ever done a toned B&W print in my life! Something to try, I guess. 🙂
 
DMR said, "The interesting thing was that there was a LOT of difference from machine to machine and monitor to monitor and little if any from browser to browser!" That's almost an understatement. Screen images can be all over the place. There aren't any computer viewing screen standards that are adhered to by the majority of folks looking a photos on a computer screen. Sadly, when we talk about a specific tonal range, brightness and some other basic image qualities, we really have to limit ourselves to talking about the paper print. As to viewing images from the internet, websites or email, on a monitor, one simple step that is often overlooked is to simply adjust the brightness of your monitor until the picture looks best to you. Chances are that simple adjustment probably brings that image closer to what the sender wanted you to see.
 
In my experience, the problem that people face when having so much control over processing is the amount of control available. Most of the pictures I see end up overly grey with ridiculous amount of detail, lacking any real blacks or whites. It's just all grey mush of microtonal details. Another side is the overly contrasty with everything black and a tiny bit of white, no midrange.
This is a problem with digital printing, your shadow tones never look as nice as the well done wet print, but getting a very well processed black and white is hard for people who can't control themselves. I believe, the very first thing needed is moderation, making a believable tonal range and appearance is key to working with any tool. I personally prefer the SilverEfex route, but can do just about with any tool. Mind you, the norm has also changed from the times of Ansel Adams, with Salgado overprocessing his digital files like he's on crack, and people totally loving it.
 
This thread got me thinking (yeah, dangerous, I know). 🙂

We had an unusually pleasant day yesterday, so after my weekly breakfast club wound down I just decided to drive around and see if anything I came about was worth shooting.

I came about a gnarled tree in a local park which caught my fancy. Looking northeast it was a deep "Fuji Blue" 🙂 sky with a few wispy cirrus stripes and a more distant stratus type layer. I shot it in colo(u)r but visualized it in B&W.

When I finally got home I started playing with it.

Just desaturating it really did not look that bad, but I started playing with the sliders, intending to kind of simulate a red filter, and just kept going, and going ... and ended up with this, which almost looks kinda like infrared ...

32336662141_ca2083313e_c.jpg
 
Bill Pierce said:
DMR said, "The interesting thing was that there was a LOT of difference from machine to machine and monitor to monitor and little if any from browser to browser!" That's almost an understatement. Screen images can be all over the place. There aren't any computer viewing screen standards that are adhered to by the majority of folks looking a photos on a computer screen. Sadly, when we talk about a specific tonal range, brightness and some other basic image qualities, we really have to limit ourselves to talking about the paper print. As to viewing images from the internet, websites or email, on a monitor, one simple step that is often overlooked is to simply adjust the brightness of your monitor until the picture looks best to you. Chances are that simple adjustment probably brings that image closer to what the sender wanted you to see.
Click to expand...

To your point on adjusting monitor brightness, Ilfordlab-US in their Tutorial have a B&W file which you can download and then compare with a print which they will send to you.
 
Bill Pierce said:
DMR said, "The interesting thing was that there was a LOT of difference from machine to machine and monitor to monitor and little if any from browser to browser!" That's almost an understatement. Screen images can be all over the place. There aren't any computer viewing screen standards that are adhered to by the majority of folks looking a photos on a computer screen. Sadly, when we talk about a specific tonal range, brightness and some other basic image qualities, we really have to limit ourselves to talking about the paper print. As to viewing images from the internet, websites or email, on a monitor, one simple step that is often overlooked is to simply adjust the brightness of your monitor until the picture looks best to you. Chances are that simple adjustment probably brings that image closer to what the sender wanted you to see.
Click to expand...

The lack of a monitor standard is really unfortunate. The industry needs to change that. Most OEMs set their monitors way too bright, at least on the PC side. I suppose they look better in a store display, but it leaves the few of us who calibrate in a poor situation. I agree the print is the benchmark, but who sees our prints anymore?

John
 
johnwolf said:
I agree the print is the benchmark, but who sees our prints anymore? John
Click to expand...

I always make a small proof print before making a large print. Once in a while I would trim that proof print and turn it into a postcard. Now I regularly make more than one small print and send out a batch of postcards.
 
Bill Pierce said:
I always make a small proof print before making a large print. Once in a while I would trim that proof print and turn it into a postcard. Now I regularly make more than one small print and send out a batch of postcards.
Click to expand...

That's a good idea. I value prints, but have no audience for them beyond those who come to my house.

John
 
Once upon a time, people had actual (as opposed to virtual) contact with other people. During this arcane activity, sometimes photographic prints were passed around and discussed. Usually the discussions lasted into the late night, fueled by red wine and camaraderie. Today we sit alone before a machine, spend a few seconds looking at an online picture by someone we've never met and never will meet, think "Nice shot" and go to the next photo by someone else whose work we will only know superficially.
 
Well, I did learn something new last night. After reading a thread here (can't seem to find it now) about Fuji digital photos shot in B&W mode still having the color information in the .raf files, I shot a couple of quick test images and sure enough, the .jpgs were indeed monochrome (interestingly, they showed "RGB" mode when viewed in Gimp) the .raf files DID have the color information in them.

I guess I'm climbing the learning curve of digital B&W and raw files.
 
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