B/W Film Images

[iPhillip]

These are some of my B/W Film images. Feel free to give me some feedback on them

[Geoff F]

Might just be me, but I think they look rather scary. Like extracts from those old B&W horror films.

What do others think?

[Wirefox]

Not scary for me but plenty of atmosphere. I think b/w is far better at conveying atmosphere and grit. Speaking of grit b/w often benefits from a little heavier footwork on the contrast and sharpening pedals. No1 definitely needs this in my opinion also try playing with the curves it can have surprising results. Red filter or polarising filter for the sky in No2. There seems to be something odd going on with the composition in No3 I think it may be the blown out sky and lopped trees. A closer crop my be possible. Having said all that I do like these B/W images. Somehow many b/w images can hit you in the gut in a way that very few colour images can.

By the way this thread is entitled B/W film images. Are these scans or are they taken in b/w mode if they are taken in b/w mode on the camera my advice would be don't...use colour raw and desaturate.

[iPhillip]

Yes, They are scans of a Black and white negatives taken with my film SLR.

I did use plenty of curves etc in them, will have a another look in PS. What I was annoyed about the most it that from scanning you lose a lot of detail you'd have in a digital image (the main problem is grain but I've been told "Its grain, its meant to be there!"). I was thinking of cropping the railway tracks a lot closer and boosting the contrast in curves but didn't get around to it, this is the photo that probably had the most detail in full resolution, but has lost a lot in downsizing. Also I think I could have isolated the tracks a lot more and used a smaller aperture.

No3 would definely benifit from a polarizing effect. is there a way to replicate this in PP? What I could just do is bring it back using exposure or something of the like and layer mask it, the sky that is.

Btw the graffiti image was a very flat negative. It was very low light and I tried my luck without a tripod, silly me.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Wirefox]

Thats good. The reason I asked if they were scanned is because I have a Nikon F301 and and Olympus OM2N in good working order (and a reasonable selection of lenses for both). These images have encouraged me to start playing around with them again for old times sake.

I expect the amount of inherent grain will depend on the film speed.I do remember that Ilford FP4 gave a fine grain at ISO125 but upping the film ISo (ASA in the old days) to 400 (FP5) would give a courser grain and provide that gritty feel that give the B&W images that certain atmosphere.

I tried to get that feel with this image from my DSLR with some heavy GIMP work.

[iPhillip]

Film is still worth playing around with, its good fun - and well because the camera I'm using is a Pentax MZ-S SLR from 2006 (it was discontinued after 2006) top notch and it seems like a bit of a waste. If I don't use it, nobody would.

I just developed a Ilford Fp4 ASA125, turned out to be a fairly good film and this time I use a little special soap solution so it has no rubbish drying marks etc. By the way that image is pretty good and definitely reflects a true Black and white film negative

Heres the only image I've scanned from that film so far, any feedback on this is welcome.

[milleniummuppet]

Here's mine!
Taken on a FED 3 - Jupiter 9 wide angle lens (35mm).
Film speed: 100 ISO.

[Iwanbogor]

Wow..very Alan parker style film ( Angel Heart ). I'd like very much with quite style like this.
Anyway, maybe stupid question but I am not afraid to ask to al of you. I never took picture wiith my camera B/W. Is possible with D 80 Nikon ? how ? and the result ?
I took B/W long time ago with analoge camera.
Is de result from D 80 same quality with analoge camera ?

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Iwan,

Don't worry, you're not the first to ask that.

I'm sure it possible on the D80, but the general concensus is conversion is better done in PP - but have a read of this thread
It's all in black and white...or is it?
for the full story.

Cheers,

[milleniummuppet]

hi Iwanbogor !

Yes, almost all digital cameras these days have black and white capability - although, as Dave said, it might be better to convert colour images to black and white in post processing.
Have a look in your camera menus anyway, and there will be some monochrome settings - including 'Black and White' and 'Sepia'.

I have actually tried using black and white on digital cameras before, with pleasing results, although there is still that atmosphere lacking that can only be captured on film .
The only thing with it, is it does not give you any control over the way the black and white image is taken.
In pp you can adjust sliders for individual colours to convert an image to black and white.

Something I would like to know though, is HOW digital camera's capture B/W images?
Do they use software to convert the image to black and white?
Or does the camera simply turn off part of the sensor?

[Dave Humphries]

Something I would like to know though, is HOW digital camera's capture B/W images?
Do they use software to convert the image to black and white?
Or does the camera simply turn off part of the sensor?

Given that we're only talking about the jpg (not RAW, which apart from metadata will remain unaffacted), they'll do it by reducing the saturation to zero I'd strongly suspect.

They won't drop part of the sensor data as that would adveresely affect sharpness, amongst other things.

Cheers,

[Colin Southern]

Something I would like to know though, is HOW digital camera's capture B/W images? ... Or does the camera simply turn off part of the sensor?

Hi Matt,

Keep in mind that sensors only capture luminance values anyway, albeit with red, green, and blue filters in front of them. Turning off some of these wouldn't give you black and white (or more correctly, grayscale).

[milleniummuppet]

Ok, so ALL of the sensors are colour?
I wasn't sure, basically what I was asking was whether digital cameras were capable of capturing only greyscale.
That clears that up .
Ta,

[Dave Humphries]

Keep in mind that sensors only capture luminance values anyway, albeit with red, green, and blue filters in front of them. Turning off some of these wouldn't give you black and white (or more correctly, grayscale).

Thanks Colin,

That's much better than my "amongst other things", but it was essentially what I was trying to say.

Cheers,

[Wirefox]

Not film but a capture of some film classics. I have been experimenting with the NL Filter in an attempt to get the film look...400ASA (sorry ISO) look.

[iPhillip]

Looks very classic film style.

Do you mind elaborating on the NL filter you mention?

[Wirefox]

iPhillip

It is a PP filter available in GIMP. The GIMP manual definition is....

NL means "Non Linear". Derived from the Unix pnmnlfilt program, it joins smoothing, despeckle and sharpen enhancement functions. It works on the whole image, not on the selection.

This is something of a swiss army knife filter. It has 3 distinct operating modes. In all of the modes each pixel in the image is examined and processed according to it and its surrounding pixels values. Rather than using 9 pixels in a 3x3 block, it uses an hexagonal block whose size can be set with the Radius option.

Techno-babble aside, provided you get the sliders in the right position you can obtain a very nice uniform grain without rubbishing the image. I suspect there must be an equivalent in photoshop

[iPhillip]

Thats interesting, I'll have to look into it.

I found another interesting way to put that film grain back in. Picasa web albums offers you a download to organise and uploads photos to the web thats quite handy, well presented and like most google things works to a good standard. It also offers you a few simple and quick photo adjustments aswell which includes an "add film grain" adjustment that does quite a nice job to make it look genuine.

[Wirefox]

I cannot make my mind up if this works. I guess the fact I ask myself that questions suggests it does not. I would welcome any comments though