Digital BW, The Print

bob geoghegan wrote:

>  I appreciate the suggestions on converting color to BW.  The benefits of
> post-shooting conversion from color are obvious.  But the other side of the
> question is if there are ever advantages in quality to using BW mode
> instead.  I'm wondering what sort of advantages those would be, if they
> even exist (I've only had the camera a week) .  Finer detail is a guess --
> in limited tests I haven't seen this in BW mode but wondered what sort of
> subject would provide the best test.  Are there any other tests for quality
> that in theory might show better results in BW mode with a particular camera.
>
> Bob G
>

Conceptually shooting in B&W mode should give less interpolation, but it will
depend on how your particular camera captures the B&W data.

If you camera actually collects b&w data from each sensor, yes there would be
more detail.  But if, as I suspect, the camera still captures in color (R,G,G,B)
and then converts (on the fly) to B&W, you gain nothing.

When these digicams 'capture' all those claimed pixels, they don't really.  As I
have said several times before, these cameras concoct ('interpolate') a pixel's
worth of data from a third of a pixel's worth of information.  e.g.  A red
sensor produces, via interpolation an RGB pixel.

So....the best way to test the camera would be to use a highly detailed scene,
with very few straight lines.  These cameras do a very good job of
'interpolating' (another way of saying inventing) straight lines or images with
hard edges and broad areas of tone.

Highly detail scene therefore would be the most telling test.

Harvey Ferdschneider
partner, SKID Photography, NYC



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