Beginner Black & White conversions (from raw) - Opinions Please

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LumixNoob

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James
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I went for a quick walk earlier and took a few shots, they're fairly bland content-wise but I wanted to have a go at doing a couple of raw b&w conversions. Is the editing any good? I'm still shooting raw+jpg because I'm not all that confident about editing raw files yet and would like to just shoot raw:

IMG_4759 by James Howard, on Flickr

IMG_4749 by James Howard, on Flickr
 
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The shots themselves are a bit incoherent composition-wise, but the processing looks fine. Keep at it.
 
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Apologies if I get this wrong as I'm viewing on a. iPad, but I would avoid the obvious fake sun glare. Up the shadows a little bit. Your right the images are not the most interesting but I think you are doing pretty good with you raw edits. It takes a while to get used to it. Keep up the good work. Matt
 
droj said:
the processing looks fine
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Yes, absolutely.

The recipe is simple…
• get ALL the data from your RAW file
• get the right WB…

and you'll get a proper conversion like
you did here, James. Beautiful DR.
 
Oxford_Matt said:
the obvious fake sun glare
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I don't see this glare as obvious fake, Matt…
as it could be so or a consequence of a closed lens
to produce the greater DoF given the conditions.

So, not so obvious…
 
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Thanks for the feedback.

Spot on Kodiak - that sun glare does look quite pronounced but was completely accidental. I was shooting straight into the sun at f8.

The composition is almost non existent on both of them, that's something I need to work on but wasn't what I was bothered about at the time. I just wanted something with a lot of highlights/shadow to play around with.

I walk that route quite often and never find anything inspiring! I should find somewhere new :)
 
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Oxford_Matt said:
Apologies if I get this wrong as I'm viewing on a. iPad, but I would avoid the obvious fake sun glare. Up the shadows a little bit. Your right the images are not the most interesting but I think you are doing pretty good with you raw edits. It takes a while to get used to it. Keep up the good work. Matt
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Hi Matt, thanks for the feedback.

I wasn't sure about the shadows, they look muddy viewing them on my phone but fine on the monitor. I lightened them once and then changed them back.
 
LumixNoob said:
I walk that route quite often and never find anything inspiring! I should find somewhere new :)
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I think it may be more about cultivating a sense of visual alertness. Not that you shouldn't try somewhere new, at all. But it's possible to train the eye, become as a hunter, without having an agenda - it's something to relax into (or hold in a state of tension). The negative is to allow a feeling that you have the camera with you, so you 'must' take pictures. Click, click, bang, bang. The world is full of images, they spew from memory cards and hard drives everywhere.

When I said 'incoherent' I was being hypercritical - for the sake of the discussion.
 
That is something I've become aware of. I now 'go out with the camera' rather than just chuck it in my bag and use it if I see something I like. It's a habit I should get out of.
 
Yep, it's different with a goal in mind even if it's just an experiment or learning exercise.
 
Another B&W Conversion

I've decided my composition needs a lot of work so I'm going to try and get out every day and get a few shots, work on getting the basics right. This is today's (opinions please) - thanks for looking:

IMG_4904 by James Howard, on Flickr
 
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Very good James, I like that!

Only keynoting is missing!
 
LumixNoob said:
Thanks Kodiak, but what is keynoting?
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It's an americanism for distortion, in this case the leaning verticals. Depending on your processing software, there should be lens correction tools to correct it.
 
LumixNoob said:
I went for a quick walk earlier and took a few shots, they're fairly bland content-wise but I wanted to have a go at doing a couple of raw b&w conversions. Is the editing any good? I'm still shooting raw+jpg because I'm not all that confident about editing raw files yet and would like to just shoot raw:
<snip images>
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Yes, continue to shoot both Raw and JPEG. When shooting B&W, the JPEG preview on the LCD is particularly useful because it shows the monochrome image which helps with visualisation, and with most cameras you can also apply coloured filter effects that are a big part of B&W shooting. For example, apply a red filter and blue areas like sky will go dark, making clouds really stand out. Orange and yellow do the same, to a lesser extent. With coloured filter effects (you can do the same thing by physically putting a coloured filter over the lens) the filter lightens its own colour and darkens opposite colours - eg, with a red filter shooting a red phone box against a blue sky, the sky will go dark grey and the post box will appear much lighter grey.

You can also adjust a few other things, like contrast, or opt for a sepia tone. But when it comes to post-processing, you still have the full colour Raw original that you can do what you like with (y)
 
Hello James. I like what's happening with the burst of sunlight in that second shot. Doesn't look like a fake addition to me at all. You're doing the right thing in my opinion--getting out there and working at it.

It's worthwhile digging around on the Net to get info on how to get really striking results from B&W. Sometimes a fairly bland image (hopefully with reasonable composition) can get a real spark of drama from good processing techniques.

Converging verticals (the building shot) can be imposing and work well in some contexts, but it looks much better if you can avoid it at the time with a different focal length, or fix it later in software, in my opinion.
:)
 
Thanks Richard, some very handy tips. I'll try them out.

Cheers Sam, I get the feeling I'm just scratching the surface with b&w. It's something that appears to be easy on the surface, but like with most photography is actually more complex. I love b&w and will persevere.
 
I just downloaded the trial of DxO Viewpoint, which did the trick:

IMG_4904fix by James Howard, on Flickr

Is there a tool in Lightroom to do this? The full version is £60 and Lightroom is only just over £100. I was thinking about upgrading from Elements anyway...
 
Looks lots better. I don't use it myself, James, but check to see if there’s a Transform Perspective option in your Elements' drop-down Image menu? Or Filter, Correct Camera Distortion? Depends what version of Elements perhaps?

Remapping data can affect sharpness, though it's probably no big deal. I've done this manually in my software and it worked out fine.
 
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I shot this yesterday and tried getting the lines straight without PP. Is it straight? To my eyes it looks slightly distorted, but I've been looking at it for too long and could be seeing things!:

IMG_4912 by James Howard, on Flickr
 
There's some barrel distortion that is a common lens aberration. That can be corrected in PP, often automatically with some programmes that are loaded with aberrations corrections profiles for hundreds of different lenses (corrects CA and vignetting, too).

The converging verticals, often referred to as lens distortion, is not. It's a natural perspective effect, because the camera is not level and you're looking up so the top of the building is further away and therefore smaller. That can also be corrected in PP (that's the 'keystone' correction mentioned above) with most programmes. Have you tried Lightroom? Get the free one-month trial, and then buy a book like Scott Kelby (y)
 
Thanks, I want to upgrade to Lightroom at some point, but at the moment I have Elements 13 and Aftershot Pro 2. I don't use the latter as the noise reduction is diabolical, but I've just tried it and it has lens profiles and the correction has worked on the jpg:

IMG_4912_1 by James Howard, on Flickr
 
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… LR + PS + DxO… when does it stop?

I do all in CO9 and rarely use a pixel editor!
 
Kodiak Qc said:
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… LR + PS + DxO… when does it stop?

I do all in CO9 and rarely use a pixel editor!
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If the tools I have are doing what I want I'm happy to stick with them, I have no immediate plans to upgrade. It would be handy though for one program to do it all (preferably in raw), but I'd rather buy gear than software. Or spend it on travel.
 
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Hi James
Great W&B conversion practice.

I felt a bit like you re. RAW / JPEG and shot both for a short time (a week?), but it took more disk space than I just RAW, and JPEGs were completely unnecessary. Deleting them now is proving a chore, as I have to check whether I have a matching RAW file for the JPEG I'm marking rejected.

You can do all the same things with RAW files as you can with JPEG, only without the loss of quality. I could see that pretty quick and had my dad who's semi-pro but a total technology dumbo to reassure me of this. I thought if he could get away with using just RAW and if he can use Lightroom and Capture NX2 (which we both use as we're on Nikon RAW format), so could I! I've never looked back.

At first, I switched to JPEG only when I took photos for eBay, but I got so quick at editing RAW and so annoyed with trying to edit JPEGs where adjustments were necessary that I stopped using JPEG even for that pretty soon on. Plus, at times, I forgot to switch back to RAW from my eBay-only JPEG, and found that I just took a load of precious shots as JPEG-only, so I don't bother using JPEG for anything anymore.

In addition, the size of RAW files encourages me to pay more attention to what I shoot and what I keep also, forcing me to mark my rejects as rejects straight away on import and remove them all regularly after I back up.

Afraid not. RAW's a blessing, not a curse.
 
Thanks & I agree Oksana, raw+jpeg is a chore, I like to manually create/organize my folders and separating the raw from jpeg is a step I don't need. I've got my workload down to raw only folders + a folder labelled 'Finished JPGs' for uploading to Flickr, printing etc. I only save those because some of the PP I have to do on the jpegs and don't want to re-do them. I prefer not having the duplicate jpgs in my Library other than those.
 
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LumixNoob said:
Thanks & I agree Oksana, raw+jpeg is a chore, I like to manually create/organize my folders and separating the raw from jpeg is a step I don't need. I've got my workload down to raw only folders + a folder labelled 'Finished JPGs' for uploading to Flickr, printing etc. I only save those because some of the PP I have to do on the jpegs and don't want to re-do them. I prefer not having the duplicate jpgs in my Library other than those.
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Now compare the JPEGs in your 'Finished JPGs' folder to those camera took and compressed for you... and you'll have your answer right there.
 
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