[Sandy Hancock]

My goal is to photograph interesting things I see. So far, I'm doing just fine.

In truth, that is my only real goal too. Sometimes we make life more complicated than it needs to be!

[ChristianRock]

So yesterday I took a "lunch photo walk" and decided to do black and white. I set the camera to RAW+ and the JPEG engine to black and white. I played around with the settings of the B&W profile until I was happy with the results.

Once I went to the little downtown area nearby my work, I soon realized the settings were too bright which killed contrast. After some more fiddling I went out taking pictures, reviewing them in my back screen (how else would I know if it was a successful B&W picture?) This workflow didn't really please me for a few reasons:

. I spent too much time chimping, which is probably the opposite of what you want to do when doing a B&W shoot
. All I paid attention to was luminance, which doesn't really translate to good pictures by itself
. The dynamic range of a digital camera just kills the picture, at least out on a sunny day. Most pictures were just a mess because the shadows are just too dark, and the brighter parts too bright. No nuances as you would have in digital.

I did find on a few of the pictures that they actually seem to make you feel like you "were there" (I'm talking about revising the JPEGs). But for the most part, the dynamic range is what killed it. So my conclusion was that it was a failure at this point. Digital black and white doesn't really exist until you take a color picture, compress the dynamic range to make it look like film actually does, and convert it to black and white. The way I did it, even when trying to process as color pictures from the RAWs, they weren't good. So the whole thing went to the trash bin.

I might give it another try with the CCD sensor, which does seem to compress the dynamic range a bit by itself.
.

[pres589]

I think I'd rather use something like Nik Collection and throw different B&W effects at a "normal" image and tweak the results there vs. having the camera JPEG engine derive a B&W image from RAW without my oversight.

[ChristianRock]

I think I'd rather use something like Nik Collection and throw different B&W effects at a "normal" image and tweak the results there vs. having the camera JPEG engine derive a B&W image from RAW without my oversight.

Yeah but if I'm just taking color pictures and converting to black and white I'm not thinking in black and white, and I'll keep the current state where in 98% of the pictures I'll just leave them as color pictures. Not just that, I'll take pictures based on colors like I do now.

EVFs are actually helpful for a project like this, because I think in most of them you can set the EVF to monochrome.

However when taking pictures I kept thinking... why am I even doing this, with it being summer and with all these beautiful colors out there? Maybe I'm just not a black and white shooter. I love the color of the sky, the various nuances of greens in foliage, the flowers...

There goes another 2018 objective

[twilhelm]

And that’s why I have black and white film.

At one point, before I sold my K20D, I had it set to black and white. It was an interesting project, especially when I would shoot the same scene with the K10D and could compare them.

[ddharriman]

ChristianRock

My advice: instead of “set(ing) the camera to RAW+ and the JPEG engine to black and white”, set just to raw and choose the camera custom image (option 1 on the menus) for black and white.
This way you will shoot raw but review your image on the back screen in black and white - you can even configure the look of the black and white image, changing sharpness, filter, etc.
The jpg embedded in the raw file will be black and white with the settings you have chosen and.
You can even see / extract / save this jpg with (per example) FastStone Image viewer.

I used this settings in my last year project of shooting the all year in black and white and been my way of shooting black and white for years.

Best regards,

[ChristianRock]

I appreciate the comments, @ddharriman and @twilhelm.

I plan on doing some more black and white shooting, this time with the K10D which I feel is probably better suited to the task. But this week I'm pretty swamped with work and tomorrow is my younger son's birthday party, so It'll probably be next week. I'll do an update then

Anyone else can also feel free to update us on their 2018 projects, or post to Norm's more general photo projects thread linked in the first page - we need the posts

[ChristianRock]

So, I decided to scrap my black and white project. There goes another 2018 resolution

Oh well, I think it wasn't for me anyway. I like color too much.

[LensBeginner]

So, I decided to scrap my black and white project. There goes another 2018 resolution

Oh well, I think it wasn't for me anyway. I like color too much.

...just like your avatar suggests

no, wait a sec...

[ChristianRock]

...just like your avatar suggests

no, wait a sec...

Ok you got me there

Yes there are some pictures that will look better in B&W, things that are monochromatic to begin with like statues, for example

I'm looking back at the B&W pictures and I'm actually thinking, I need to try this again. So there we go

[Shenloanne]

Objectives this year would be:

Take more than last year (Only uploaded 170 to flickr, I've put up close to 400) So this is met.
Rediscover my Pentax and get off my smartphone for photography, I know that the best camera is the one in your hand but I've wanted to rediscover my camera and photography with it. So I'd consider this met.
Last year I made a photobook of my fav 100 photos from the past ten years, 10 photos per year, ten years. This year I bought an A3 scrapbook and I intend to fill it's 150 pages of photos going forward. The 100 I have from the past ten years serve as a lovely greatest hits for me. This one is ongoing.