adamdewilde wrote:
[...I remember seeing that last photo before. I really liked it then. And I really like it now.
Come to think about it. The few times I\'ve played with SilverEfex I\'ve gotten great BW results. I just never have the time or energy to work with BW files. I\'m the type of person who loves looking at other peoples black and white work. But hates his own. I think it\'s like value for money. I feel as if I am \"loosing something\" if I convert from color to black and white.. Man I\'ve been living in Asian to long :P
Maybe a M246 would sort me out
Adam, Thanks for the kind words. In my view there is a great advantage in the M-Monochrom: when you\'re using it you simply have to think in terms of B&W — once I started using it I didn\'t want to shoot B&W with the M9, as I don\'t like the feeling on having to decide with some images whether to process them for color or N&W. Because my M-Monochrom now has some severe sensor corrosion (for the second time), I been shooting some B&W with my M9-P, which also had sensor corrosion twice, but in October I go the permanent sensor replacement, a solution that I\'m waiting for for my M-Monochrom.
Judging by your obvious skill with color files, I doubt that you could not develop a way of efficiently processing B&W. Last February, I linked the following video clip that could be the basis for easy processing files with Silver Efex with a consistency in terms of the look. The clip shows the method this photographer uses for XT-1 files and for producing an extreme high-contrast look, but it can of course be tuned for the M-Monochrom or M9 or M240 or SL and for a lower contrast look. For example, I use the Tri-X preset rather than the TMax 400 used in the clip — and I usually don\'t apply the Silver Efex grain setting. The basic idea of flattening the original file that you put into Silver Efex is very good. In a production situation, as for wedding photography, you could make several presets for different types of lighting and contrast situations.
@airfrogusmc: I generally find that I get better results with Silver Efex than I do with Lightroom, or that I sued to get in Photoshop: better gradation, particularly better highlights — and more control over them. Also, Silver Efex adds an element of \"randomness\" — maybe \"contingency\" is a better word for this — in the way processing and printing film does and, therefore, in my view, yields more interesting results. However, I usually make final tonal adjustments or selective dodging and burning in Lightroom
