Originally posted by little laker I don't believe that any DSLR's have a B&W setting.
What I thought, too. But in his review of the K10D, Sean Reid complains that it lacks black and white preview and claims that most other manufacturers have sorted this out by now. That was a surprise to me, but apparently there's something to it. The
Nikon D2X seems to be one of the cameras that can save the raw file with a black and white preview. Sean Reid--who seems to be almost entirely interested in black and white--says that this helps him tell quickly whether the shot is going to come out (in b&w) as he hopes. Note that you still have the raw capture file, so the images you move to your computer will have color info. This can be useful for further b&w processing on your computer, as it allows you to play with color channels. But I guess I can see the point of shooting in black and white mode, as an option for some photographers.
Anyway, you can't do it on the K10D. You can shoot, then convert in camera, but that of course is a pain in the neck. About one-third of my shots end up as black and white. Sometimes I know when I'm shooting that it's going to be a good photo for grayscale treatment, sometimes I don't know or I'm simply not thinking about it. I have also taken quite a few shots that I thought would work well in b&w/grayscale that, in the end, looked better in color. Anyway, I only shoot raw and I'm grateful to have all the info, including the color info.
Will
P.S. Done a bit more reading (including reading Sean Reid's old article about the Nikon D200) and I gather that, in fact, quite a few other dslr cameras have a raw + b&w preview option. Maybe it will be there in the K20D?