Digital BW, The Print

On Nov 8, 2004, at 3:33 PM, B. Campbell wrote:

>
>> Agreed - but just to be literal, white balance settings *do* affect 
>> B&W
>> conversion; whether they are a major factor just depends on how you're
>> doing the conversion.
>
> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you but when in RAW mode with every 
> digital
> camera I've used the original data wasn't affected by the white balance
> setting on the camera. When in RAW mode with those cameras (most 
> recently
> the Nikon D100) any white balance setting could be set,  which one 
> didn't
> matter, regardless of how the white balance camera setting the 
> resulting raw
> data would be the same. White balance was affected only by the 
> adjustments
> made in post-camera editing..

You're misunderstanding, but that's, um, understandable!

We're not talking about the effect of WB on the RAW data at the capture 
stage; we all can agree that's just metadata and does not impact the 
sensor data at all during capture.

We're talking about converting RAW files to B&W images; in this 
process, your white balance settings - whether keeping the settings 
your camera chose, or using custom settings after the fact - do affect 
the resulting B&W file. Just as applying a curve to RGB color data 
before converting to B&W would affect the B&W.

Best,

Roger