Home · Register · Join Upload & Sell

Moderated by: Fred Miranda

New fredmiranda.com Mobile Site

New Feature: SMS Notification alert

New Feature: Buy & Sell Watchlist

FM Forums | Canon Forum | Join Upload & Sell

end

Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

AmbientMike
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

garyvot wrote:
There is something more immersive and tactile working with black and white film and processing, that's certain.

I have seen brilliant work from digital too. And I think you need to shoot medium format film at minimum to get anything close to the resolution and tonality available from a modern full frame sensor.

I shot Tri-X and HP5 for many years. Funny enough, my favorite 35mm "black and white" film during the digital darkroom era became the late, great Kodak T400-CN, which was a C-41 process monochrome color negative film. I made some beautiful scans from that stuff. It was easy...Show more →

I'd use Tri-X, for retro reasons, but the Pan F, even 35mm, is more for top quality reasons

I just don't think that you can get as many tones out of a digital print as a FB Zone VI Brilliant or Ilford Galerie (FB darkroom paper, not the inkjet stuff) or newer quality RC papers, and it just isn't quite as good

Feb 22, 2024 at 10:06 PM

Peter Figen
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

While there may be a theoretical advantage to shooting black and white with a dedicated monochrome sensor or on black and white film and using contrast filters in the traditional way, and coming from someone with decades of actual film experience, I'm not seeing any actual advantages over shooting a Bayer patterned digital sensor and using more modern tools to extract a black and white from the RGB file. What I'm actually seeing are final images that have better tonal gradations and far better tonal separations that you get with film or a monochrome camera. I'm also seeing, pulling black and white from the GFX sensors, literally the best black and white images I have ever made. So I guess I'm in the, shoot RGB then convert later camp, and as far as printing is concerned, the black and white prints I'm making digitally on papers like Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta rival any print I've ever made on a traditional darkroom paper.

Feb 22, 2024 at 10:50 PM

AmbientMike
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

Peter Figen wrote:
While there may be a theoretical advantage to shooting black and white with a dedicated monochrome sensor or on black and white film and using contrast filters in the traditional way, and coming from someone with decades of actual film experience, I'm not seeing any actual advantages over shooting a Bayer patterned digital sensor and using more modern tools to extract a black and white from the RGB file. What I'm actually seeing are final images that have better tonal gradations and far better tonal separations that you get with film or a monochrome camera. I'm also seeing, pulling...Show more →

Used Hahnemuhle Fine art Baryta on a 3800, curious about your methods as darkroom prints looked better

Feb 22, 2024 at 11:50 PM

Peter Figen
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

AmbientMike wrote:
Used Hahnemuhle Fine art Baryta on a 3800, curious about your methods as darkroom prints looked better

Mike - Nothing special. really. Most of the time I used Advanced B&W on an Epson 9900, but using that is a little tricky where you have to convert your black and white RGB file to sRGB first, choose Printer Manages Color, Epson Color Controls and Advanced Black and White in the drop down menu, and make sure to set the paper thickness in the Epson portion of the driver to 5 as that paper mic's out to be something like .436mm, going from memory. And yes, I keep a Starrett micrometer on top of the printer just to measure different papers.

At other times I'll just print the neutral file as a color image using Photoshop Manages Color and choosing the custom profile I made for my printer. The difference in the prints in how they look is negligible but the ABW prints actually have a slightly deeper dMax - the blacks are just a tick blacker with ABW.

Really, that's all there is to it, but I'm also starting with really great files so there may be something there, I'm not sure.

What I do know is that when I had a show in San Pedro six or seven years ago and all the prints in the show, both black and white and color were printed on the same Epson 9900, and all on the Fine Art Baryta paper. I had more than one person at the opening ask me how I got my prints so clean and free of dust specks. I felt just a bit guilty telling him they were all inkjet prints even though that information was on the info sheet for the show. Those people thought they were all darkroom prints. Actually all those prints looked better than darkroom prints.

Now, as to why your own prints are not doing the same might take some time to diagnose, but if your printer is in good working order, it's a great printer.

Feb 23, 2024 at 02:43 AM

alundeb
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

Starting with great files really helps. The 5DS(r) is the lowest I would go for B&W prints to rival darkroom prints from MF or LF film.
APS-C cameras with old Tamron lenses won't do the trick here, sorry.

Feb 23, 2024 at 02:57 AM

Peter Figen
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

alundeb wrote:
Starting with great files really helps. The 5DS(r) is the lowest I would go for B&W prints to rival darkroom prints from MF or LF film.
APS-C cameras with old Tamron lenses won't do the trick here, sorry.

I've made a lot of great black and whites from the 5DSR but what I'm getting of the GFX is at an entirely different level. A lot of the prints in the exhibit I mentioned were from transparencies and negatives that I drum scanned with my Howtek, but I don't really draw much of a distinction between different sources. Wherever the files come from, they all need to conform to your personal standard for how you prepare your files for output and the fundamentals for that do not change with the source.

Without having seen Mike's examples yet, it's hard to know exactly where to start other than to say that I know it's possible to make fabulous looking black and whites from digital sources and on digital printers. Heck, even noted black and white fine art photographer Huntington Witherall made the move to digital printing quite a number of years ago.

There's still a craft to making digital prints but it's not quite the same craft that went into making trad wet darkroom prints, but the way you think about it and approach it is very similar.

Feb 23, 2024 at 03:50 AM

AmbientMike
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

alundeb wrote:
Starting with great files really helps. The 5DS(r) is the lowest I would go for B&W prints to rival darkroom prints from MF or LF film.
APS-C cameras with old Tamron lenses won't do the trick here, sorry.

Great suggestion, I'll just go buy the new 180 macro. Oh wait there aren't any. 180L is older, 180 Tamron is excellent

Feb 23, 2024 at 09:22 AM

jedibrain
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

Doing a full spectrum mod and using a "hypercolor" filter is another great way to get interesting b&ws. When you do the conversion in software, between channel mixer and individual channel intensity in the conversion you have a ton of control. May be a cheaper and easier mod than a visible light monochrome conversion. And adds other IR image opportunities as well.

Feb 23, 2024 at 10:27 AM

AmbientMike
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

Peter Figen wrote:
Mike - Nothing special. really. Most of the time I used Advanced B&W on an Epson 9900, but using that is a little tricky where you have to convert your black and white RGB file to sRGB first, choose Printer Manages Color, Epson Color Controls and Advanced Black and White in the drop down menu, and make sure to set the paper thickness in the Epson portion of the driver to 5 as that paper mic's out to be something like .436mm, going from memory. And yes, I keep a Starrett micrometer on top of the printer just to...Show more →

Thanks Peter, I need to try to get the 3800 going again, and try these settings, it has been sitting for awhile. A bit on a tangent, but it doesn't sound like I need to replace it, so that is definitely good to hear.

I looked at an IR print from the 3800 I had sitting around, it's not bad at all. Seems to be getting more infinite tones or something on the mid-90's stuff, though, hard to describe. It'd be a hassle to get a darkroom going again, though, but I'd like to in some ways

Feb 23, 2024 at 10:28 AM

Peter Figen
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.2 #10 · p.2 #10 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

AmbientMike wrote:
Thanks Peter, I need to try to get the 3800 going again, and try these settings, it has been sitting for awhile. A bit on a tangent, but it doesn't sound like I need to replace it, so that is definitely good to hear.

I looked at an IR print from the 3800 I had sitting around, it's not bad at all. Seems to be getting more infinite tones or something on the mid-90's stuff, though, hard to describe. It'd be a hassle to get a darkroom going again, though, but I'd like to in some ways

The first thing to do if the printer has not been operated for a while would be to take each ink cartridge out and shake it before re-installing, then run a nozzle check and examine that for any clogged or non-firing nozzles. On some of the lighter colors, you may have to use a loupe to actually see the nozzle check dashes. You will probably have to do a nozzle cleaning and I'd just do a normal cleaning cycle. If that doesn't clear any clogs, then run a couple of prints through the printer (it can just be a synthetic file you create in Ps that has all the colors in it. What you do not want to do is run multiple cleaning cycles back to back to back. If you do that, you can overheat the internals inside the print head and literally cook your print head into oblivion. But don't start printing in earnest until all of the nozzle check print is clear of clogs.

Feb 23, 2024 at 10:48 AM

gdanmitchell
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #11 · p.2 #11 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

Peter Figen wrote:
Heck, even noted black and white fine art photographer Huntington Witherall made the move to digital printing quite a number of years ago.

I’m surprised at how few people know about him, or the astonishing diversity of his output — the range from Ansel-like BW work to his wild (and also beautiful) digital prints of highly modified flowers.

Feb 23, 2024 at 08:03 PM

Peter Figen
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.2 #12 · p.2 #12 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

gdanmitchell wrote:
I’m surprised at how few people know about him, or the astonishing diversity of his output — the range from Ansel-like BW work to his wild (and also beautiful) digital prints of highly modified flowers.

I used to know him fairly well when I lived in Monterey but we didn't really stay in touch when I moved to L.A. His work was just great.

Feb 23, 2024 at 10:44 PM

AmbientMike
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #13 · p.2 #13 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

Peter Figen wrote:
The first thing to do if the printer has not been operated for a while would be to take each ink cartridge out and shake it before re-installing, then run a nozzle check and examine that for any clogged or non-firing nozzles. On some of the lighter colors, you may have to use a loupe to actually see the nozzle check dashes. You will probably have to do a nozzle cleaning and I'd just do a normal cleaning cycle. If that doesn't clear any clogs, then run a couple of prints through the printer (it can just be a...Show more →

Wow, that is great to know, Peter!!! I had thought about the inks needing something along these lines but didn't know to do this. And hadn't heard about the overheating

Hopefully can get this thing going. Easier to use the durabrite ink pronter/fax/scanner on ~8x10's but you really need bigger than that and the ultrachrome is a pro printer

Feb 24, 2024 at 10:53 AM

Kasper6188
Online
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #14 · p.2 #14 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

Not everyone may notice a difference in the real world shooting with a cfa sensor vs a mono sensor, but the difference certainly is there. The noise looks much much nicer out of camera. This was on an old 24mp Leica mono at 8000iso, straight out of camera. I don't see any modern cfa body spitting out anything this clean at 8000iso

Feb 25, 2024 at 10:09 PM

asnapper
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #15 · p.2 #15 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

I have a Pentax K3M & a Fuji 100s & the APC-C monochrome sensor in the Pentax, has reduced noise & great sharpness, its performance is like a FF sensor. There is a difference, but the 100s beats it , which IMHO is down to the much larger sensor plus the exceptional Fuji B/W profiles. I don't think any other camera comes close & I have been shooting B/W film for decades & I prefer the B/W from the Fuji. If you are a landscape photographer, the 100s is the way to go for ultimate IQ, in both colour & B/W. At the moment the 100s is heavily discounted, a v2 is coming shortly, so its a compelling buy & when paired with the cheap 35-70 kit zoom, you have a winning combination. The lens is compact & very sharp, its sharper than the 3 canon T/S lenses I use with the Fuji

Feb 26, 2024 at 05:44 AM

Planetwide
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.2 #16 · p.2 #16 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

There is approximately 1 stop of light loss due to the Beyer filter. A monochrome sensor will not experience this light loss, and will provide a lower noise floor for each ISO in the equivalent image. The other major difference comes about because of the de-beyering algorithm must combine individual R, G, G, B pixels to composite the final colour image. This results a substantial loss of sharpness, which again, the monochromatic sensor does not experience, especially in high frequency edges. This results in a significantly more detailed image.

The Leica solution of a dedicated sensor and algorithm is probably the best solution available today. It would be interesting to compare a demosaic'd mirrorless (A7IV same) sensor to the M11M and see which one is best...

Feb 26, 2024 at 07:15 AM

gdanmitchell
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #17 · p.2 #17 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

Planetwide wrote:
There is approximately 1 stop of light loss due to the Beyer filter. A monochrome sensor will not experience this light loss, and will provide a lower noise floor for each ISO in the equivalent image. The other major difference comes about because of the de-beyering algorithm must combine individual R, G, G, B pixels to composite the final colour image. This results a substantial loss of sharpness, which again, the monochromatic sensor does not experience, especially in high frequency edges. This results in a significantly more detailed image.

The Leica solution of a dedicated sensor and algorithm is probably the...Show more →

The point that a number of us are making is that these elements of “better” measured technical performance a) don’t mean much when we can already produce outstanding monochrome images from Beyer sensor camera files and b) they are cancelled out by the loss of the powerful creative control that we obtain by working with full color data in post.

I guarantee you that we can produce truly first-rate monochrome prints from Beyer sensor files, that we have more creative control in post when we use color data, and that no one is going into a gallery with prints from both monochrome and Beyer sensor originals and sensing any difference among them that can attributed to this.

While your logic tells you that there will be “substantial loss of sharpness,” we see extraordinarily sharp monochromatic prints from Beyer files. While your logic tells you that there will be a “lower noise floor” with a mono sensor, the 1-stop difference you note is essentially never a real issue and we see extremely clean images from Beyer files. While you propose that a monochromatic sensor will produce a “significantly more detailed image,” we know that Bayer sensor images made with modern sensor have terrific detail.

Feb 26, 2024 at 11:31 AM

Kasper6188
Online
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #18 · p.2 #18 · Converting to monochrome - is it yet possible?

gdanmitchell wrote:
The point that a number of us are making is that these elements of “better” measured technical performance a) don’t mean much when we can already produce outstanding monochrome images from Beyer sensor camera files and b) they are cancelled out by the loss of the powerful creative control that we obtain by working with full color data in post.

I guarantee you that we can produce truly first-rate monochrome prints from Beyer sensor files, that we have more creative control in post when we use color data, and that no one is going into a gallery with prints from both...Show more →

The thing is, I wouldn't call it a substantial loss in sharpness using a cfa, but more of a substantial gain in sharpness in using a debayered sensor. You're talking roughly 3x detail due to each particular pixel playing a single role instead of collecting different color data in an array. For someone who doesn't necessarily need to rely on the creative flexibility by manipulating the color channels or potentially using the file in color, that little extra bite and that one stop iso performance looks mighty fine when you're talking 10,000 vs 20,000.

Now I will say I've never shot with a GFX though I do plan to one day. Maybe I'll put my foot in my mouth, maybe not!

Feb 26, 2024 at 12:35 PM

1 2 end
FM Forums \| Canon Forum \| Join Upload & Sell 1 2 end

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.