One colour in B&W framed shot

T

Texi400

Messages
2
Name
Mark
Edit My Images
Yes
Hello folks,

Ever since seeing those haunting scenes of the little girl wearing the red coat in the otherwise black and white film Schindler's List, I've been attempting (off and on) to capture a picture that allows only one tight spectrum of a specific colour to be visible whilst everything else remains (or is made to become) black and white or grey scaled.

One of the stills from that film is here: http://www.everseradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/red-girl4001.jpg

And another example of this type of filtering, this time of a NY yellow cab, can be seem here: http://ih3.redbubble.net/work.3225656.2.flat,550x550,075,f.yellow-cab.jpg

Okay, I know that in Photoshop, colour saturation can be manipulated with layering but it's extremely tedious work. My boxes of cokin filter plates have been in store since the late 80's because of frustrations in lag times from having taken pictures with film and seeing the results days or sometimes weeks later. Maybe I should dig them out to try on the digital.

The Nikon film camera bodies' have joined the cokins and I've had a D40 for a couple of years now, using many of the old but great lenses. Does anyone have any ideas on how to capture for example, that red telephone box without any other colour being shown?

Thanks, and all the best for this New Year to you.
 
Filters or preferably settings when planning to take the shot, yes. Like I say, one can manipulate the image in photoshop programmes but that seems a bit of a cop-out. No offense intended.
 
If you do a Google search for "selective colouring in camera" (or maybe coloring as you will get the American hits as well) you will find a few threads on this - one here. Looks like it is one of the features available on some Canon compacts.

The problem I can see with this is that it would leave all of one colour within a B&W image, rather than a true "selective" area. The Photoshop method would give much more adjustable results, both in terms of area and colour. And to be honest, I see that as a much more artistic method rather than let the camera do it for you. No offense intended ;)
 
Last edited:
The problem with the effect you're trying to acheive in camera is that colour is not just on or off. If you wanted a filter that would selectively obscure all but red, of course the phone box would stand out as red, but so would any other surfaces with red tones in it. I'm not sure how much of this you'll already know, but hopefully you'll understand that it would be almost impossible to acheive that clean colour around only the taxi cab in the above mentioned pic with just filters.

As others have pointed out, if you want to effectively seperate a subject with colour you will need post processing on a computer (unless there are some clever dark room techniques for you film users).

It's not really a cop out though, all digital images go through some form of processing (anti-liasing, contrast curves, saturation boosts etc), whether it's automated or creatively controlled by the end user.

If you do have a load of filters though it would be interesting to see any results for experiments!
 
Digital_Clarity said:
(unless there are some clever dark room techniques for you film users).
Click to expand...
It was/is hand-colouring, with messy dyes, very fine brushes, hours and hours going blind and a magnifying glass :)

Just to add my opinion to the cop-out bit:
I fail to see a difference either intellectually or artistically between drastically altering an image before (filters) or after (PP) it was taken.
 
Not sure whether this is the kind of answer you are looking for, but the Canon Powershot G11 (and a number of Canons other compacts) using the Colour Accentuate setting. To do this you aim the camera at the colour you want to select, and then desaturate all other colours using the jog dial. Easy.
 
Other than using a camera that has a built in function to render just a single colour as seen, and the rest of the image in B&W, I don't believe it's possible to achieve that effect in a normal camera using filters.

Besides, creating the effect in Photoshop is only a matter of a couple of minutes work, depending on the complexity of the element you wish to render in colour.
 
Carter64 said:
It was/is hand-colouring, with messy dyes, very fine brushes, hours and hours going blind and a magnifying glass :)

Just to add my opinion to the cop-out bit:
I fail to see a difference either intellectually or artistically between drastically altering an image before (filters) or after (PP) it was taken.
Click to expand...

The difference is that by doing it in Photoshop you retain control of the complete image and the image potential. Using Photoshop is not a cop-out, it's utilising an essential tool to enhance digital photography. In fact I would go as far as to say the op wants an easier way to do it but doesn't want to spend the time learning how to do it in PS - am I right?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top