Digital BW, The Print

All,

I was told once that a useful workflow is to shoot color film to 
produce B&W prints . . . that that procedure offers more control than 
shooting B&W originally.

Two questions:

1. Do you agree? What is your experience with such workflow?

2. What do you then find the best way to translate the color to B&W? 
Selecting on of the channels? Blending channels? Using Grayscale? 

Sure would appreciate any input. TIA.

Jack

"jackperk" <jackperk@...> writes:

> All,
> 
> I was told once that a useful workflow is to shoot color film to 
> produce B&W prints . . . that that procedure offers more control than 
> shooting B&W originally.
> 
> Two questions:
> 
> 1. Do you agree? What is your experience with such workflow?
> 
> 2. What do you then find the best way to translate the color to B&W? 
> Selecting on of the channels? Blending channels? Using Grayscale? 
> 
> Sure would appreciate any input. TIA.

I fairly often end up rendering B&W results from color originals for
one reason or another.  Chromes aren't the medium of choice for this,
though.  I do it mostly from digital or from color negs. 

If I'm specifically intending B&W for a project, I shoot B&W.
However, if something unexpected turns up when I'm shooting color, or
if I need a bunch of color and one B&W, I'll usually just shoot the
one thing in color and make B&W later and I've been very happy with
the results.

In digital this is even more true -- my digital camera has a B&W
setting but I can't prove it does anything useful; in particular it
doesn't make the files any smaller.  (It does make the R, G, and B
values equal).  (In theory I'd think the software could process the
raw CCD data differently knowing the result was to be B&W, and produce
higher real resolution though not more pixels in the file; but I have
no reason to believe my Epson 850Z actually does this.)

I've also used it when the lighting is so completely wonky that I
can't produce good color out of it (this is often mixed and very low
lighting shot with my digital, whose blue channel produces
mountain-size grain in low tungsten light).

The way to get the best B&W out of a color original with Photoshop is
with the channel mixer.  In extreme cases it's sometimes necessary to
mask and convert different portions different ways.  This lets you get
greyscale renderings you pretty much couldn't do with B&W film, too
(as I see C.D. Tobie has already discussed). 

(Or in Picture Window Pro, the conversion to monochrome lets you
specify an arbitrary filter or a stack of pre-defined ones from their
filter bank.)
-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@...  /  Ghugle: the Fannish Ghod of Queries
 John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net
        Book log: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/Ouroboros/booknotes/
                 Photos: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/

Hello-

Due to the type of photography I sometimes do, I have used color neg 
for quite some time. Going digital, at this time is not an option. 
However, I always have been asked to supply both b&w and color, so I 
have had to come up with creative ways to meet this request. The 
computer came to the rescue. As far as the b&w goes, I found Russell 
Browns technique to be quite useful. See for yourself at 
www.russellbrown.com, read his tip "seing in black & white". The tip 
is not specific to color neg or slide, but the end result is b&w.

Keith Randolph
--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "jackperk" <jackperk@y...> 
wrote:
> All,
> 
> I was told once that a useful workflow is to shoot color film to 
> produce B&W prints . . . that that procedure offers more control 
than 
> shooting B&W originally.
> 
> Two questions:
> 
> 1. Do you agree? What is your experience with such workflow?
> 
> 2. What do you then find the best way to translate the color to 
B&W? 

> Selecting on of the channels? Blending channels? Using Grayscale? 
> 
> Sure would appreciate any input. TIA.
> 
> Jack

I was just reading on John Paul Caponigro's site 
(http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com) today how he shoots everything in color 
and converts to black and white later (if desired) in Photoshop.

Two other ways to convert to black and white that you didn't mention: Using 
adjustment layers as outlined by Russell Brown, a senior creative director 
for Adobe, and published in a Picture magazine article a while back; and a 
Nik (http://www.nikmultimedia.com) Photoshop plug-in filter for black and 
white conversion that is part of their Color Efex Pro! set. I haven't tried 
either of these methods yet so I don't have any opinions to pass along.

Jeff Greer

At 01:09 PM 04/26/2002 +0000, you wrote:

>All,
>
>I was told once that a useful workflow is to shoot color film to
>produce B&W prints . . . that that procedure offers more control than
>shooting B&W originally.
>
>Two questions:
>
>1. Do you agree? What is your experience with such workflow?
>
>2. What do you then find the best way to translate the color to B&W?
>Selecting on of the channels? Blending channels? Using Grayscale?
>
>Sure would appreciate any input. TIA.
>
>Jack
>
>
>
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On Friday, April 26, 2002, at 02:38 PM, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:

> "jackperk" <jackperk@...> writes:
>
>> All,
>>
>> I was told once that a useful workflow is to shoot color film to
>> produce B&W prints . . . that that procedure offers more control than
>> shooting B&W originally.
>>
>> Two questions:
>>
>> 1. Do you agree? What is your experience with such workflow?
>>
>> 2. What do you then find the best way to translate the color to B&W?
>> Selecting on of the channels? Blending channels? Using Grayscale?
>>
>> Sure would appreciate any input. TIA.
>
Jack,

Although I almost always shoot 4x5 T-max 100, I have experimented with 
Fuji Astia 100 chrome film in 4x5. Astia is a less contrasty alternative 
to Provia and DisneyChrome (Velvia). Astia allowed me to capture my 
image, scan it and get a well exposed and printed image. Using my Howtek 
D4000 drum scanner this was not a problem. However, with that said, I 
have also experimented with Fuji Velvia in 6x6 and scanned those negs as 
well. The results, even with the drum scanner were not as smooth and 
lovely as with B/W T-max 100.

Remember that T-Max 100 has 22 stops of exposure latitude. That means an 
awful lot when working with a scanner with limited dmax. I would tend to 
overexpose slightly and under develop  by 20% for a scanner with a 
limited dmax. That way you are ensured of getting a detailed negative in 
the shadows and at the same time holding tons of highlight detail. 
Scanning a "flat" negative makes life much easier when you begin 
printing from scanned files.

Mike