Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Paul D. 
DeRocco" <pderocco@i...> wrote:
> > From: scrber [mailto:stephen.bate@m...]
> >
> > After 2-3 years of digital darkrooming and B&W printing I am 
still
> > not happy with my methods to darken blue skies.
> > I am familiar with the red filter / polariser filters on film
> > capture, but my efforts to successfully replicate this digitally
> > have never been particularly fruitful.  I have tried many channel
> > mixer, hue/sat methods to convert my digital colour images to B&W
> > but all result in some sort of posterisation or noise in the 
sky.  I
> > cannot get a smooth dark sky.  Selective darkening also is very
> > difficult if you are really trying to go dark, the halos/  edges 
are
> > almost impossible to avoid.
> > Even after running neat image or selective bluring to remove sky
> > noise I end up with clear banding in the sky as it gets darker.
> 
> It's true that extreme color shifts prior to grayscale conversion 
can
> amplify noise or introduce posterization. The two are to some 
extent
> mutually exclusive, in that noise breaks up posterization--which 
is why
> NeatImage on an 8-bit image can turn noise into posterization. 
This is a
> good reason to use the new PS CS, which supports 16-bit mode for 
most
> operations.
> 
> When I shoot with my 10D at ISO100, the noise level seems quite 
low after
> using the Channel Mixer to get a really dark sky. Is it possible 
that your
> original source is just too noisy? Or maybe you have a lower 
tolerance for
> noise than I do.
> 
> I put a 1:1 crop from a B&W image in 
http://www.pbase.com/image/24112078.
> This isn't a "finished" picture, in that all I did with it was use 
Channel
> Mixer and Levels, so it has plenty of flaws. But is this sky too 
noisy for
> you? Not dark enough?
> 
> --
> 
> Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
> Paul                mailto:pderocco@i...

Can't wait for a B&W digital camera / back.  The noise you are 
getting is similar to mine (S2), but I wanted BLACK skies, really 
dark stuff - like this one of Pauls :

http://home1.gte.net/res0a2zt/JumboBoulders.jpg

Closest I can get without getting real messy is something like this:

http://www.hang-up.co.uk/Images/brochure/full%20jpegs/020706%20lakes%
20view%20from%20cottage%20window%20B&W%20copy.jpg

May just be an inherant limit of capturing in colour  :-(

Steve