Digital black-and-white

Because someone can’t make a good black-and-white print digitally or in a conventional wet darkroom doesn’t mean that good b&w inkjets or silver prints can’t be made. Silver has been around long enough that, if we see a bad print, we blame the printer, not the materials. Inkjet hasn’t been around as long and folks can still get away with saying, “It’s not my inability to make a good print, it’s the fault of the inkjet process.” As more and more good inkjet prints are circulated, as more and more good b&w images from digital camera appear on the internet, this excuse will disappear.

But, for me, right now, when somebody says digital b&w is awful, it’s just a statement about their own limitations.
 
astro8 said:
Hey Lewis44, can you share what lens and settings in SEP you used?...I gotta have me some of that. Maybe I'm cracked but last shot reminded me of a set off Lost In Space.

Great shots.
Click to expand...

I was looking at it and thinking the lighting has given a great sense of depth - that can't be natural! It does look like a film set.

A very good pic, and the treatment given is very effective. Probably nothing like a film image, but with a charm of its own.

The one thing I dislike about SEP is the lack of an audit file (or sidecar file in Lightroom terms) to record the steps applied. The changes are applied directly to the file, and once you save the file there's no record of how you achieved it (unless you save the settings as a custom preset, and even then it can't save the local enhancements). For version 3 they really need to implement non-destructive editing.
 
Bill Pierce said:
But, for me, right now, when somebody says digital b&w is awful, it’s just a statement about their own limitations.
Click to expand...
Very true, but they'll brush off this statement by saying that their limitations are not limitations, but rather ethics from their "aesthetic experience" with B&W film.
 
Digital b&w afwul? It's rather expensive compared to 5-pack of film, I mean good digital camera and computer, let alone processing software. Lets assume 5 rolls of film would be what average person would expose during vacation, then review contacts and make some prints.
 
Hey Lewis44, can you share what lens and settings in SEP you used?...I gotta have me some of that. Maybe I'm cracked but last shot reminded me of a set off Lost In Space.
Click to expand...
Silver Efex has quite a few adjustments.

I normally use the Neutral preset and then make my corrections to that. On the right side, in Silver Efex, I adjust Brightness, Contract and Structure, then go to Film Types and Adjust for Grain (Usually 500/Fine).

Below that is Sensitivity, which gives you sliders for color (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue & Violet.)
That is where I make the most important adjustments. I don't have a preset for that, as each scene is different. I may then go back up to Contrast & Structure for a final Tweak.

The lens was probably a 50 Summilux or VC Nokton f1.5. These were shot about 3-4 years ago, so Im not quite sure which it was.
I was debating whether to get another R-D1 and went back to look at some of my old stuff and worked these images.
I did not have Silver Efex Pro then, so redoing them in B&W was Kinda' fun.

I find that landscapes with Real Blue Sky's and Cloud Structure are great to work with.
Glad you like the images.
 
My personal opinion is that b&w doesn't look the same without grain. Now, I know fine art b&w shot with large-format cameras are essentially grain-less, but my mind's recollection of b&w prints reflects visible grain structure.

Digital is convenient...which nobody will dispute...but sometimes I use digital for it's ease of use and then convert to reflect what I would have shot on film if I wasn't so lazy at that time (or had the time and/or money).

That being said, I shot this with a D700 and used Nik SilverEfex Pro for the conversion. It looks exactly as I hoped it would...like a landscape shot on 35mm Tri-X film. I enlarged it to 20x30, and it held up nicely, which I'm not confident Tri-X would have done in the end.

Just different tools I guess...

5538350745_5f9c6314e8_b.jpg
 
lewis44 said:
Silver Efex has quite a few adjustments.

I normally use the Neutral preset and then make my corrections to that. On the right side, in Silver Efex, I adjust Brightness, Contract and Structure, then go to Film Types and Adjust for Grain (Usually 500/Fine).

Below that is Sensitivity, which gives you sliders for color (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue & Violet.)
That is where I make the most important adjustments. I don't have a preset for that, as each scene is different. I may then go back up to Contrast & Structure for a final Tweak.

The lens was probably a 50 Summilux or VC Nokton f1.5. These were shot about 3-4 years ago, so Im not quite sure which it was.
I was debating whether to get another R-D1 and went back to look at some of my old stuff and worked these images.
I did not have Silver Efex Pro then, so redoing them in B&W was Kinda' fun.

I find that landscapes with Real Blue Sky's and Cloud Structure are great to work with.
Glad you like the images.
Click to expand...

Love the images and thanks for the insight.
 
astro8 said:
Hey Lewis44, can you share what lens and settings in SEP you used?...I gotta have me some of that. Maybe I'm cracked but last shot reminded me of a set off Lost In Space.

Great shots.
Click to expand...
I was just about to say that... and then I read your post.

Looks like a tv set from the 60's, damn right.
 
Dr Gaspar said:
I was just about to say that... and then I read your post.

Looks like a tv set from the 60's, damn right.
Click to expand...

astro8 said:
Hey Lewis44, can you share what lens and settings in SEP you used?...I gotta have me some of that. Maybe I'm cracked but last shot reminded me of a set off Lost In Space.

Great shots.
Click to expand...

Astro8, you are not cracked at all. I love Joshua Tree, have been there multiple times. And I've said the same thing for years. At any moment I expect Dr. Smith and the arm-waving robot to appear from behind the rock formations. 🙂
 
Panatomic-X in Microdol is as close to Monochrome Digital that I could get when shooting film.

picture.php


picture.php


I've never felt the need to add CGG (computer generated grain) to a digital image. It is as close to Pan-X as I can find.
 
Digital b&w

Digital b&w

isorgb said:
Epson R-D1 RAW file and Epson PhotoRaw (Photolier in Japan) software.
If you will try it, you will know, what I want to say.
Really.
Click to expand...
Hi,
I do use an epson R-D1, most of time in Raw + Jpg setting.
I also have a IMac computeur and I didn't succeeded opening any raw file through Epson PhotoRaw. Either I have uploaded them in Iphoto or directly from the Sd Card.

Could you help me ?

Regards
 
Bill Pierce said:
You can control the color and tonal conversions in a digital black-and-white, if you wish, to mimic silver. Asahi, some while back, ran some tests to see what folks thought was “sharp.” This led them to working on 35-MM lenses whose MTF curves held up very well to 30 lines per mm and then fell off. Yes, anti-aliasing and a Bayer array does effect sharpness, just not quite as much as a lot of folks think. The degree of anti aliasing is up to the manufacturer. Get a full frame DSLR and you are not going to have much of a problem. I expect the situation will continue to improve. if you are comparing your final print results to those from a 400 speed 35-mm film, the anti-aliasing/Bayer argument falls exceptionally flat. Start shooting 4x5.
Click to expand...

+1.

I think that a lot of people are confusing grain and tonal relationships with "acutance" and "detail." An 8 Mpix shot* from my old Olympus 4/3 DSLR with a pretty strong AA filter (and a very good lens) has at least comparable detail (that is, it resolves at least as much fine structure) as a similar shot on Tri-X taken with my M6 (and a very good lens).

In both cases resolved detail is, more often than not, limited by focus error and camera movement, not by the sensor's characteristics. A shot from my 12 megapixel Olympus is even better, and since that camera has in-body image stabilization, it's better still. Yet the pictures look different, unless some care is taken in post to make the digital output look like film. Thus, "detail," even fine detail, cannot explain the difference.

What it really comes down to is (1) the rendering of tonal relationships from scene to print (including spectral mapping), and (2) perceived acutance (versus acutance from edge effects) due to grain noise. Note that edge effects are easy to obtain in digital.

*This particular combination of camera and lens (E-500 and 12-60SWD) resolves well over 700 vertical cycles (= horizontal line pairs; measured casually by me; I'm certain it could do better in a well-controlled lab test) – almost exactly equivalent to 30 cycles/mm on FF 135 film. In the lab, using a 10 Mpix sensor with a weaker anti-aliasing filter, the same lens delivers more than 1400 vertical cycles at MTF-50, all the way across the frame. That corresponds to 58 cycles/mm on FF 135 format. Guess what the maximum MTF50 of Tri-X is, under highly optimized** laboratory conditions? The answer, from Kodak's own spec sheet: about 53 cycles/mm. So, no, "detail" is not the difference, and neither is acutance, at least in the commonly-accepted technical sense of that word.

**Note that this is the MTF of the film alone, not overdeveloped, etc., while the digital results are the MTF for the entire imaging system. When combined with a camera (that won't ever hold the film flat enough unless it's a Contax RTS III), a lens (that has various aberrations and probably isn't focused precisely anyway), a scanner or enlarger, etc., the Tri-X result for the overall imaging system will always be worse than the film's rated MTF.
 
Last edited:
20110705-7052467-L.jpg


20110619-scan1109-2-XL.jpg


Both shot the same evening, in my back yard.

Top: E-500, 12-60 SWD; bottom: M6, Neopan 400 (XTOL 1+1), 50mm Summicron-M.

Note: the only way to get the top image to look even remotely like 35mm film was to add grain and back the "clarity" slider off to –20 in Lightroom. 😛
 
Last edited:
Does anyone filter their digital shots on the lens? I've been thinking of trying a red or orange filter on my DSLR to see what difference it makes and if it's even doable.

Years ago, I sold a shot of a lily to some lily fanatics, nice older couple in Knoxville. Before they bought the print, they asked if the flower was real 🙁
The smoothness of the digital file converted to B&W made the flower look artificial. On other shots I added in some grain, made a big difference. As did fiddling with Curves.

I still prefer B&W film though. Just got some Efke developed an am anxious to see what it looks like on the scans (no darkroom so scanning it is!) And I don't have to apply PS filters to emulate a particular film, I just use it!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom