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08-27-2017, 02:48 AM   #1
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In camera B&W JPEG settings

I'm interested specifically in the k3's in-camera JPEG capabilities with regard to black and white images. I know a lot of people would recommend shooting RAW and then post-processing to B&W, but I'd like to fully understand the camera's B&W JPEG performance.

I love black and white images, they really make you focus on the subject. If you find yourself flicking through a stack of old 6x4 prints and there's a B&W image stuck in there, it really stands out and I always pause for a little longer on it. There could be a very deep routed evolutionary reason for our affinity with B&W images - someone once told me that when you are in an accident (or some other fast extreme life threatening situation) you only see in black and white. This is because the brain ditches [costly] colour processing in favour of analysing the scene and preparing the body for appropriate evasive action.

Anyway, having recently acquired a nearly new K3 (which I am totally loving BTW), I thought I would set up one of the user modes to quickly allow me to go into B&W shooting mode. To cut a long story short(ish) I soon came to realise that there are quite a lot of different options on the K3 for tweaking the resultant JPEG image and I'm enjoying discovering what they all do, but I would very much like the advice of experienced K3/ii users in this regard.

I'll list some of the specific BW settings I've come across here:
1) Custom Image Finishing option "BW" with the following parameters that can be changed:
- Filter effect
- Toning
- High/Low key adjust
- Contrast
- Contrast - Highlight Adjustment
- Contrast - Shadow Adjustment
- Sharpness
- Fine Sharpness
- Extra Sharpness
2) Digital Filter - most of the options here affect the rendered image, but the obvious BW relevant ones are:
- High Contrast (with 5 levels of setting)
- Bold Monochrome (with 3 levels)
3) White Balance affects the image, but I've left on Auto

Then, I guess there's under/over exposing - perhaps under exposing a little improves black and white contrast a bit?

So the question is - what preferred settings do people use when shooting 'every day' B&W JPEG, at least as a starting point for programming into a user mode.

Thanks

08-27-2017, 03:05 AM   #2
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I will check mine later but I have custom settings for B&W on my K3 as the results SOOC were not great (which is normal for virtually any camera). The most important thing is to boost the contrast a bit in B&W, otherwise photos come out looking very flat.
08-27-2017, 04:03 AM   #3
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I don't have much experience with the in-camera editing of the K-3, but one thing I did with my Ricoh GR was to join the Daily Challenge and do all my editing in-camera. After shooting every day for a month and doing no post processing I really got to know the limits of the camera quite well - and it was great fun. I highly recommend going that route.

I believe @utak did something similar with the K-3. With any luck he might chime in with his experiences
08-27-2017, 11:41 AM   #4
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A great way to get to know these settings is to take a photo in RAW, load it in to the pentax digital camera utility, and mess around with the settings on your PC. Much faster thank tweaking in-camera, and once you know which settings are the most important, you can load them into the camera and make adjustments on the go as needed.


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08-27-2017, 12:36 PM   #5
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Thanks for the responses...

@Johnathan - It's the flatness that you describe that has prompted me to put in some time investigating, and wondering why the Pentax BW mode is not slightly better tuned, but I guess it's a straight conversion from colour to BW with no adjustment. I look forward to learning what your preferred settings are.

@Adam - So, you are saying that if I fire up the Pentax software included with the camera (which I admit is still in the box, totally ignored), it should have all the same settings as the camera and be able to exactly reproduce the same JPEG results as in-camera, i.e. it has the same processing 'engine'? If that's the case, that's a great idea, thanks.

Hoping for some other opinions on BW settings - there must be lots of people shooting BW with the K3/ii, surely?

Thanks
Jay
08-27-2017, 01:36 PM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by jjnevis Quote
@Adam - So, you are saying that if I fire up the Pentax software included with the camera (which I admit is still in the box, totally ignored), it should have all the same settings as the camera and be able to exactly reproduce the same JPEG results as in-camera, i.e. it has the same processing 'engine'? If that's the case, that's a great idea, thanks

PDCU is designed to mimic many of the on-camera custom settings, and the interface is more attuned to the camera displays than a traditional RAW converter (eg Lightroom). This is often the cause of complaints about its lack of 'intuitiveness'. However if seen as providing the camera specific image editing controls then it makes more sense. It offers much more as well (check out the Colour Tuning wheel!) plus more sophisticated NR and sharpening features.


Adam is right, its the ideal way to experiment to see the effect of the actual camera controls. PDCU is based around the processing 'engine' of the very sophisticated Silkypx RAW software, and as such I doubt the processing functions 'under the hood' have much in common with the in-camera ones .... considering the tiny processing power in the camera compared to a 64Bit version of the software running on a modern Windows PC. So you will get far more quality and power out of the Software, However, if you choose to carry out the editing on the camera JPEGs then its a good way to learn the best settings for your images.
08-27-2017, 01:45 PM - 1 Like   #7
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QuoteOriginally posted by jjnevis Quote
@Adam - So, you are saying that if I fire up the Pentax software included with the camera (which I admit is still in the box, totally ignored), it should have all the same settings as the camera and be able to exactly reproduce the same JPEG results as in-camera, i.e. it has the same processing 'engine'? If that's the case, that's a great idea, thanks.
Yes that's correct, it has the same sliders and everything.


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08-31-2017, 05:03 AM - 2 Likes   #8
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Very helpful advice from @Adam, didn't know you could do this.


QuoteOriginally posted by savoche Quote
I believe @utak did something similar with the K-3. With any luck he might chime in with his experiences
Hi Savoche! Yes, I tried a month of daily in-camera settings adjustment and editing, including b&w photos with jpegs on my K-3. I tended to leave the camera settings on AWB, although I occasionally turned this off, and went manual - it didn't make a huge difference IMO. Each scene I'd photograph needed a different kind of adjustment depending on light, contrasts, shadows, bokeh, etc., so I gave up trying to finesse the settings before taking the photograph, and focused on using the in-camera settings to process the photos after they were taken.

What did make a difference was:

1. Under-exposing the image. I tended to dial in -0.7 EV on the exposure adjustment, sometimes going as far as -1.7 (e.g. in scenes with very strong contrasts, such as sunlight shining on shiny surfaces) when using the Av setting. This helped reduce over-exposing bright white areas - areas that could blow out when I used post-photo digital filters, e.g. bold monochrome.

2. I took colour photos and then applied some base parameter adjustments to the photos, and sometimes other in-camera colour filters (e.g. toy camera or retro), before converting to b&w. This is just the way I like to work; producing a colour image, with brightness, saturation and contrast adjustments to help give b&w photos the right balance, and then converting to b&w. Part of the reason I do this is I can get interesting b&w tints from colour photos by extracting nearly all the colours, but not 100% b&w. All this, of course, is much easier to do post-processing on the computer and not the camera's small screen!


The big lesson I learned was to spend time getting the right level of under-exposure using camera settings.


EDIT: In terms of specific settings, this photo in quite challenging light, was well received by the Daily in participants. You can see the settings I used in the EXIF data on the Flickr page


Last edited by utak; 08-31-2017 at 05:50 AM.
09-01-2017, 06:37 AM   #9
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QuoteOriginally posted by utak Quote
In terms of specific settings, this photo in quite challenging light, was well received by the Daily in participants. You can see the settings I used in the EXIF data on the Flickr page
That's a fantastic image and I'd say the B&W settings are probably spot-on.

My K3 B&W settings are:

No colour filters
No toning (yuck)
High/Low key +1
Contrast +3

However, I can't say I'm entirely happy with the results, though the increased contrast over the standard output is the most important step and makes a huge difference. I rarely use OOC jpegs without fiddling about a bit image-by-image in the camera.

My Fujifilm X-M1 produces lovely B&W SOOC jpegs and I need to sit down with both and try to replicate them in the K3.
09-29-2017, 01:00 PM   #10
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My (usually) B&W K-3 setting is only red filter.
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09-30-2017, 09:09 AM   #11
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I use the RED FILTER function and then boost contrast in PP if needed but that is a simple start.

Have you tried the infra-red function? That is in B/W and super close to the old school analog photos. Depends on the subject but you can get some really great results.
09-30-2017, 09:17 AM   #12
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QuoteOriginally posted by Theov39 Quote
I use the RED FILTER function and then boost contrast in PP if needed but that is a simple start.

Have you tried the infra-red function? That is in B/W and super close to the old school analog photos. Depends on the subject but you can get some really great results.

where is that function ?
09-30-2017, 10:15 AM - 1 Like   #13
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QuoteOriginally posted by panonski Quote
where is that function ?
It is a bit buried and not the easiest to find. It was more direct on the K-7. On the K-3:

1. Go to Custom Image select (R/H press on the rear dial) and select B/W.

2. Then press INFO and another screen with options will come up. The first one is FILTER EFFECT.

3. Select that and then you can select various color filters plus infra-red. The RED filter will give the highest levels of contrast.

Alternatively, you can go down the list and select CONTRAST to increase the contrast.

Or better yet, follow Utak's advice. His B/W photos are brilliant and way out-class mine!
09-30-2017, 11:10 AM   #14
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QuoteOriginally posted by Theov39 Quote
It is a bit buried and not the easiest to find. It was more direct on the K-7. On the K-3:

1. Go to Custom Image select (R/H press on the rear dial) and select B/W.
......

Thanks I found it

I've been there already, but I forgot... I like the orange one, and blue one.
I reallly like highlights at max ( but not white ) and deep darks ( but no black )

adding contrast is the way, but I think you can manage better from settings...

---

my techique is always get the color picture, and later in LR I can play with it...

I really don't like limits... I was little dissapointed when I find out the K3 does not have filter bracketing function ( my Pen Ep-5 has it ) - K3 has just exposure bracketing- so it's kind of - not managable to get BW and Color at the same time - and sometimes I would love that.
09-30-2017, 10:48 PM   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by panonski Quote
Thanks I found it

I've been there already, but I forgot... I like the orange one, and blue one.
I reallly like highlights at max ( but not white ) and deep darks ( but no black )

adding contrast is the way, but I think you can manage better from settings...

---

my techique is always get the color picture, and later in LR I can play with it...

I really don't like limits... I was little dissapointed when I find out the K3 does not have filter bracketing function ( my Pen Ep-5 has it ) - K3 has just exposure bracketing- so it's kind of - not managable to get BW and Color at the same time - and sometimes I would love that.
True. Often compact cameras have more functions like that.

My compact Nikon AW 110 from the same time as the K-3 has both built-in GPS and WIFI while my Canon S100 has a built in ND filter. Great for long and slow exposures of waterfalls.

But then they don't have all the advantages that DSLRs have. It's a trade-off I guess although the K-3 really should have had integrated WIFi as that was already common when it was released. The flu-card option is very second rate.
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