I tend to go back and forth with B&W myself. Some pictures are just better in B&W, others in color.
As a starting to having a monochrome camera try setting one of your DSLRs to shot raw and ljpg. Set the camera to B&W and maybe a red filter. When you look at the LCD for post exposure review the image will be B&W. You can see how it looks in B&W and if worthy of conversion of the raw file. It will help you to start seeing in B&W.
I set my G9 this way and when using ISO 400 it has almost a film like grain.
My Canon S90 has the nice point that the monitor goes BW if I set it to shoot BW. Obvious really, and the BW monitor is great for helping one to think in monochrome.
And it would be great if it would save RAW files at the same time, so I had the color just in case. But it only has one setting with RAW, which is RAW+JPG, and when it's set to that, it won't shoot in BW, presumably so people don't get confused when the RAW files are in color.
Can anybody think of a way around this?
Update:
I looked at this with my Panasonic G1... it has something called "film mode", a silly thing which apparently emulates various "films", including BW. ... But! of course it will only let you use this in the most automatic settings, where the camera controls everything. Not even the Program setting can be used in BW. And I'll bet that it won't record RAW in all those other settings either.
Update:
David L said:
My G1 works fine with the film modes and any of PASM (I never even tried any of the other settings). You can shoot RAW+JPEG as well, and the display will show B&W if you're shooting B&W.
Aha. Love you guys. This was just what the doctor ordered. It turns out that a bit too-sloppy reading of the manual and the occasionally less-than-intuitive buttons on the Panasonics conspired to convince me this didn't work. But it does. Due hurrah.
Well, this is gonna be fun to try. I have not actually shot in BW for... fifteen years! And of course I've never used a BW screen for it.
I agree with you, it's annoying that you can't shoot RAW+JPEG in scene modes. On your S90, check out the Nostalgic SCN mode; it has 6 options. I find the 6th, a grainy, high-contrast affair, especially appealing.
ReplyDeleteBeyond not being able to shoot RAW+JPEG, is the fact that in SCN mode you can't even control aperture, shutter speed or ISO. The only variables you can manipulate are focal length and EV comp (and the flash). You can't even choose focusing mode!
The S90 is crying out for a hack :-)
My G1 works fine with the film modes and any of PASM (I never even tried any of the other settings). You can shoot RAW+JPEG as well, and the display will show B&W if you're shooting B&W. Give Dynamic B&W a try.
ReplyDeleteThanks. (post updated in a minute.)
ReplyDelete