Stoopidgirl....its all your fault was looking through your many many photos which are truely awesome so it gave me some inspiration on taking some black and white photos of my own....

Heres the prob, mine are no where near as good as stoopidgirls, i know she is a professional but was hoping for some tips on lighting etc, as most websites are just wayyyyy to complicated in explaining...as i only have a Fujifilm F410 (or is that the start of my problems)

Anywayz...see what you think to the following....











Me frustrated with B&W shots ....

 

Black & White photography is more of an artform than color. In my opinion, B&W photgraphy leaves a lot to subjective interpretation of the pictue. With the absence of color, your picture communicates emotions better. It leaves more to the imagination.

In composing a picture, you need to remember a particular shade of blue and red side by side will blend and look like a single object. So you need to think about contrasting using lighting as opposed to color.

I like your pictures. I think they could have been improved with a bit more contrast and if you had caused a few parts of the picture to go out of focus to show depth, particularly in the slotcar shots. Consider using the depth of field indicators on your camera. The woodgrain on the table is focused and attracts attention away from the cars. The positioning of the cars on the slot track causes me to assume you wanted to display motion. So you might consider ways of showing that in your shot.

I like the shot of you with the window backlighting. If you had not titled it you expressing frustration, I might have thought you were thinking about going for a drive in your MINI as the car above your head attacted my attention. Again, the contrast of the MINI against a white background caused my attention to focus on it instead of on your facial expression or pose. Is that the top of a suspension bridge tower behind the MINI?
I think you could do a lot with this picture.

As you think about the composition of the entire picture, you've become a better photographer already. Good luck with it!

 

Since you were shooting models, you could positioned your camera loowweerr..

Just like beken said, using contrast and composition to communicate is important because of the absence of color. I thought that all your photos were a little grey, you definately could have upped the contrast more.

Working with light, my suggestion would be to use the most diffused light you can. I personally think solid light in black and white photos are not good, because it creates too much of a contrast in one concentrated spot.

 

I take it you originally shot these in color and converted to b&w? There are several ways of doing that and, like beken said, they could stand to be more contrasty. Just converting to grayscale usually doesn't look too good.

Your whites aren't quite as white as they should be. For instance, in the last shot of the VW, notice how much whiter the specular highlights are on the chrome than the white roof. You want whiter whites (as they say in laundry detergent commericals) while still preserving detail.

If you can post some of them in their original color versions maybe some of us can have a whack at it. I don't claim to be an expert in B&W but I'd like to try and I bet some others would, too.

Mark

 

In PhotoShop CS2, I usually make an adjustment layer and then use channel mixer, then click monochrome and adjust the RGB sliders for a great looking B&W I can't get as easily any other way. There are also PhotoShop Plugins for converting to B&W, but none work as well as Channel Mixer for me.

 

I like the shots but agree they are very grey. I'm not sure if that's because of how you converted ithem or that you just didn't have enough light to make the white parts stand out.Maybe you just need a little more light on the subjects, Look at your self portrait, the light throught the window is very white.It puts your right arm at a good level of contrast. If you have any kind of photo editing software try playing with the contrast a little.I sometimes have to use the dodge and burn tools as well to lighten or darken more specific areas. The pictures themselves are actually quite good. I'm flattered that I got you off your butt to take some (even if it did frustrate you ). I don't ever know how to explain what it is that I do, not to mention I can't give away all my secrets. A girl's got to keep somethings hidden. Maybe I'll shoot some more black and whites to hopefully help you a long. I didn't even think I had that many. My last one that I did (which is on my flickr account but I can't post it here) is actually too light. I need to go back in and ad more dark areas too it.
good luck, can't wait to see more

 

I think it looks fine (unless you've already changed it since you posted that). Belated happy birthday, btw!

Mark

 

Yeah, that's how I do it.

Mark

 

Here's my (quick) version of your VW shot. Hope you don't mind my messing with it. I couldn't play with the channel mixer since I don't have a color one to work with but I did some levels and curves stuff. You had no real whites, aside from the highlights, and no blacks, so playing with the levels sliders helped a lot. Not all pictures need a full tonal range from pure black to pure white but something like this usually should.



Mark

 

seee...looks better already. I would actually put more contrast on it but that's just me. I'm a big fan of lots of contrast.

 

They look a little grainy, or is that just me? Does your camera have an ISO setting? If so, maybe try dropping it down a level (< 800)?

In terms of composition, I'd try shooting "up" at these models; I think that'll add to their presence. :-)

 

I like your photos, but I have a ? about your slot cars, which are very kool, which set is it or are they indivdual cars that you can buy?

thanks for your response,

tommyb

 

Cheers for your replies, i also thought they were too grey, this using the B&W function from the actual camera itself. I also took these at 400iso....but i also have a 800iso option (but reduces the image size down to 1 megapixel in quality) is this right ??

I use photoshop 8.0 for adjustments etc, so i could always change the contrast using that (cheers for the tip on that)

TommyB its from this Scalextric set....


Right im off to do some more pictures and see what i can come up with....

 

Sorry for the late reply to this (been at home sick. better now ) I use the channel mixer too. It produces results that are considerably better than the simple greyscale conversion and it really isn't that much more complicated.

 

Shoot at the lowest ISO you can for whatever lighting conditions you've got. If you have a tripod or some other way of supporting the camera, doing a long exposure with the very lowest ISO your camera has (50, maybe?) will reallly reduce the noise.

Does your camera have some sort of contrast setting? The exposures are fine but the brightness values of the pixels are all clumped around medium gray instead of being spread out like they should. You can see that by looking at the histogram in Photoshop. I'm wondering if the camera is set to low contrast. Another tip is that the contrast (and brightness) adjustment in PS doesn't work very well. It's much better to use the levels and curves adjustments.

Here's a nice little tutorial on using histograms and the levels adjustment in PS: http://www.shortcourses.com/how/hist...histograms.htm
Also http://www.computer-darkroom.com/tut...torial_3_1.htm

Mark

 

Here's Thom Hogan's article on converting color to black and white:
http://www.bythom.com/bandw.htm

Mark

 

Wow cheers guys

Iso Settings That i have on my fujifilm finepix f410 are:
800 (1 megapix)
400
200

I always use it on Auto mode aswell...i notice when i flick over to manual mode i can mess white WB (presumably white balance) and also something called EV ? with + and - settings (no idea what that is )

I always use a stand nowadays, as ive taken many a picture that ends up all blurred, but im getting there


Below i used curves with a tad bit of contrast...think its toooo dark now LOL

 

That's good. The contrast makes the car look more "stunning".

It just occured to me that most people on this thread are using digital cameras.

I must be one of the last holdouts still using film.

I just got myself a 5.1 Mpixel point n shoot camera this Christmas so am still learning how to use it. Too many features and stuff to consider.

 

The channel mixer is a quick way to get decent results.

It helps to have good eye/densitometer coordination!

 

Why don't you post the color original for the image you think is too dark...a few of us can make a B&W conversion to see how well we do!

 

EV= Exposure Value
Read a little about it here: http://www.chem.helsinki.fi/~toomas/photo/ev.html

 

Once you've got a good digital camera, I can't see how you could ever go back to film. I can't even put into words just how cool the instantaneous feedback is, and you never have to worry about paying for film and developing again! Er, unless you want prints, that is. I'll be interested to hear how you make out with the digital camera, and how quickly it takes for your film camera to become a paperweight. :-)

Before everyone lights their torches and grabs their pitchforks, yes, I know there's lots of people who still prefer film, and that there're probably ways in which dSLRs haven't caught up to their film counterparts yet, but for me, there's just no comparison. The convenience is simply astounding, and the quality of my Rebel XT is outstanding, even with the "kit" lens.

 

I agree...and I was a diehard film man, shooting B&W neg, Color neg, color transparencies in all formats up to 4x5, processing all my own negs and printing all my own B&W and all large custom color in the darkroom. Now...my Rebel XT & Canon i9900 crank out all I need in my old age.

BTW...I have a pristine Nikon F3 w/ 55mm micro Nikkor, 24 F2.8 Nikkor, 105 F2.8 Nikkor and 200 F4 Nikkor. All virtually Ex+++ condition. Anyone who shoots Nikon interested?

 

I highly recommend downloading Picasa 2 from Google.

http://picasa.google.com/index.html

With Picasa 2, you will get a wonderfully fast thumbnail viewer with every image file on your computer, but you also get basic image manipulation tools. I don't use any of them because they are too basic for me. But, I do absolutely love the Filtered B&W effect in the Tuning section.

It allows you to emulate the look of a B&W film images taken with different colored filters. You can probably get similar results using the Channel Mixer in Photoshop, but I only have Elements, so no Channel Mixer option for me - and this is so simple to use to get dramatic effects that I don't know if I would use Channels even if I could.

If you post a color version of one of your images, I could show you. But here are samples with one of mine.

Orginal:


With Red filter emulation, the reds, oranges and yellows all merge into white:



With Green filter emulation, more shades of gray between yellows and oranges, while reds go to black:



With Blue filter emulation, just a little darker than the green filter for this particular shot:



You can see how the different filters dramatically affect the B&W output - just like they would if you used a color filter on the lens of a traditional camera shooting B&W film.

 

I used the B+W function on the camera itself, so no colour versions are available. What i did notice is, if i take a picture in colour, then photoshop into B+W, that it looks much better. So maybe the B+W function on the camera is the cause of all the problems.