Colour & B&W questions

[jben_net]

Hi Everyone,

I've been reading that to enhance B&W photography you can use colour filters. Would this only be for film based photography?

Also, is there a way of setting the D70s to shoot in B&W in camera, or is always going to be a conversion in photoshop. And if you can do this, which way yeilds better results?

In my colour modes section under optimize image there are three options:

Ia (sRGB)
II (Adobe sRGB)
IIIa (sRGB)

whats the difference between Ia and IIIa?


Also I've been reading about a new colour model called PhotoPro RGB -its got even more visible spectrum than Adobe RGB. Has anyone got experience with this colour model?

I've been shooting in sRGB by accident for a while - switching over to Adobe RGB now..... I'm thinking that will give me better results because of this graph I've been looking at that shows the visible spectrum.

I don't have a manual in english for my D70s (its chinese or something)

Cheers.....

[Aussie Dave]

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototip-archives.html

You should find quite a bit of info from this site.
Just scan through the list of links and settle in for a few hours of reading....

Have fun

And the D70 doesn't have a B&W mode. It needs to be done on the PC afterwards

[jben_net]

Great stuff here. Went to the site, put the printer on overdrive, then went down to the pub and read for an hour.

That guy has some great tips and knows a hell of alot about photography, but I think he needs some web design skills! Oh well guess that not his area

[Aussie Dave]

Great stuff here. Went to the site, put the printer on overdrive, then went down to the pub and read for an hour.

That guy has some great tips and knows a hell of alot about photography, but I think he needs some web design skills! Oh well guess that not his area

So what did you learn ? Did this help to answer your questions ?

[jben_net]

It's answered more questions than I had in the first place! Something that I'd overlooked is only use a lens hood when I'm shooting in harsh lighting situations - when really its good to use them all the time because there's always going to be light comeing in from the side - even if you can't see any flares - so the moral to the story is you'll always get better contrast and colours if you shoot with a lens hood

I'm trying to figure out now if it really matters what colour profile you shoot in if your shooting in raw.

Theoretically it shouldn't matter what colour profile you shoot in because raw is just the info straight from the sensor - yet I'm getting much better colours when i shoot raw in adobe RGB as opposed to raw in sRGB - guess I'll need to do some more research

I think I might need C1pro....

[xorl]

I've been reading that to enhance B&W photography you can use colour filters. Would this only be for film based photography?

Colour filters let you enhance the contrast between particular objects on B&W film. Eg a red filter will separate the blue sky from the white clouds. However this isn't necessary with digital since you can do everything through your photo editor - using colour filters (a la B&W) would just be throwing away information.

Also, is there a way of setting the D70s to shoot in B&W in camera, or is always going to be a conversion in photoshop. And if you can do this, which way yeilds better results?

The D70 doesn't have a B&W mode. However it is generally better to do this through Photoshop or similar since you can choose the most appropriate method of conversion instead of accepting whatever is offered in camera.

whats the difference between Ia and IIIa?

Both modes are sRGB. Apparently Nikon has optimised the colour response in IIIa for landscapes. Ia should be a more accurate representation of the original scene, but you might prefer the colours in IIIa.

Also I've been reading about a new colour model called PhotoPro RGB -its got even more visible spectrum than Adobe RGB. Has anyone got experience with this colour model?

I've been shooting in sRGB by accident for a while - switching over to Adobe RGB now..... I'm thinking that will give me better results because of this graph I've been looking at that shows the visible spectrum.

You should consider how you are using the output. There is no benefit to Adobe RGB for online display since the extra colours can't be represented on a standard CRT monitor (note the implications for photo editing..). If you are editing in 8bit there is an argument for using sRGB since the 0-255 range is spread out over a smaller gamut and you will get smoother tonal changes.
Depending on your output device you may not see any benefit to AdobeRGB, or the improvement may be slight (eg slightly more saturated greens).
Note that many commercial printers will end up converting to sRGB anyway so there is no benefit in that case.

I'm trying to figure out now if it really matters what colour profile you shoot in if your shooting in raw.

Nup, you can change this later. With RAW, the in camera settings are merely defaults for RAW->JPEG conversion.

There are sometimes good reasons for processing under a different profile, however unless you have specific reason for using Adobe RGB in mind I'd generally recommend sticking to sRGB for the moment. sRGB is simpler so less can go wrong. With RAW files you can always develop with a different profile later if you change your mind.

[jben_net]

Thanks mate, you've really gone to work here.

I value your advice. I'll shoot in sRGB then.

Cheers,

James

[leek]

James,

While it won't really help with the type of questions that you had, you can get a copy of the user manual here:

http://nikonasia-en.custhelp.com/cgi-bi ... faqid=4329