Digital BW, The Print

Um...Sorry for asking this..

Why not simply shoot with a polarizer? It's really a lot simpler..  
Sometimes, as others have already noted during other threads, one needs 
to do more than simply accept whatever RGB data a digicam shovels out.. 
Filters make as much sense in the digital age as they did pre-PhotoShop 
in many cases..  Sometimes the data you need just is available if you 
leave all the filtering until post image capture.. You can't ask 
software to polarize the sky for you.. How would it know which angle 
from the vertical  light waves were at?  Not to mention, it can't 
suddenly add detail that was obscured by other data - like removing the 
reflection from a water surface so you can see below..

Assuming you are capturing digitally or from an RGB scan of a color 
slide/neg, after starting with that cobalt blue sky,  use the channel 
mixer to move the really dark blue sky you should now have to black..  
or use Convert to B&W Pro or a Silver Oxide filter for whatever film 
type you want and just select a red-filter for pre-filtering?

Heck, nothing prevents you from shooting through a red filter with a 
polarizer onto  even a digital back or digicam - not to mention onto any 
B&W film.. 

Then you'd have those black skies you want to start out with..

BTW: That boulder shot of Paul's,  looks to be from Joshua tree and shot 
with a deep red filter (both the boulders and the sky seem to have that 
look to them).  The skies there can be cobalt blue with not a hint of 
clouds, so that deep blue sky is a great starting point.  And certainly 
more likely than in the village scene you compared it to.  With clouds 
in your sky, and given the likely climatology, that village scene had a 
sky about as dark as one might expect..


To illustrate what I'm talking about, and not just sound like I'm 
throwing rocks.. Here's something that took me significantly less than 
five minutes.

Here's the detail of a color slide I shot at Joshua Tree (using a 
polarizer):
http://www.p-o-v-image.com/images/joshtest/start.jpg

next converted by Convert to B&W Pro with no pre-filtering:
http://www.p-o-v-image.com/images/joshtest/unfiltered.jpg

next converted by Convert to B&W Pro with Red pre-filtering:
http://www.p-o-v-image.com/images/joshtest/prefiltered.jpg

a "final" version, with the levels tweaked a bit (I could have lightened 
the boulders more in levels or used curves to really lighten them to 
match Paul's image more):
http://www.p-o-v-image.com/images/joshtest/final.jpg

 
Keith Krebs

"Just some guy," caretaker of the Multiverse's largest EPSON printer 
User Community (highly recommended by Vogon Poets and MegaDodo 
Publications), at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EPSON_Printers/
and  the Multiverse's largest Canon printer User  Community at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Canon-printers
"For the rest of you out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together 
guys"