OM-D and "On board" black&white

[spiderfrank]

Hi guys, some days ago I took some shots at a little flamenco show. It was night, and the lights were substantially red, so I decided to make black and white photos. I know all the manuals says to do the conversion at home, but I wanted to try what the camera was able do with it's settings.

ok...
Olympus OM-D E-M5 with Carl Zeiss Jena 80/1.8
manual focus and manual exposure (I setted the time, and played with the aperture)
iso 5000 with noise filter off
sharpness -1
contrast +2
mode "red filter" on (some shots with green filter)

I Think the results are really good, and this is a great thing for a lazy guy like me ;-)

















i hope you like them as much as me

[nlubis]

This is one more reason I'm thInking of getting one. Thanks for sharing.

[Jamie Pillers]

These are REALLY good! Composition and subject are great. Lens and camera did a great job! And as far as b&w goes, I don't know how film could have done any better in these conditions. Digital b&w is definitely here to stay. How long will it be before Olympus or Fuji will provide in-camera menu selections for "Tri-X", "Pan F", "HP5", etc.. I'll bet Nik Silver Efex folks are worried about this possible future! :-o

[reiki_]

lose the borders.

[Dave Jenkins]

I like them very much.

[spiderfrank]

thank you everybody, glad to see you like the shots.

Jamie, I think the film black & white is still much better than the digital, when you need a great dynamic range and a huge amount of greys, there is no substitute, imho, but for the kind of photos of this topic, very "graphic", the digital is great... here we have almost only black and white, not so much subtle tonal blends, so the digital is ok, but the game is not always this ;-)

[vrgard]

Without getting into the digital vs. film debate, these are very good. Thanks for sharing them as well as your settings to achieve these results.

-Randy

[mabelsound]

The highlights are a little blown--I might have underexposed a bit, and usually do, intentionally. But nice work! ISO 5000, goodness.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by mabelsound

The highlights are a little blown--I might have underexposed a bit, and usually do, intentionally. But nice work! ISO 5000, goodness.

These are great but I agree with mabelsound about the highlights.

[mfogiel]

Some very nice photos, certainly non any worse than shot on film at that ISO !
I always knew, digital B&W looked best when it was competing with pushed film...
Bravo !

[KEH]

Good shots, I agree. I have taken to shooting the OM-D raw only, but with the film mode set to medium contrast BW. This lets me see in BW, reduces viewfinder contrast, and makes it easy to use the 'peaking' mode for showing over and under exposure.

Apologies for being somewhat off-topic.

Works for me.
Kirk

[sevres_babylone]

I assume there is a setting to shoot raw+jpeg. If so, you should try it for a while. That's the setting I use almost all the time on my Epson, Ricoh GRD3 and Leica. Sometimes the camera's jpeg conversion is spot on, and, particularly where the photograph is going to web only, I don't even bother with the raw. But in situations like this, having the raw alternative would be invaluable to bring out highlight detail. In the bars in which I shoot, a red spotlight and a green spotlight is a fairly standard configuration. The problem with solely relying on either green or red filtration, is that sometimes messes up part of the picture. I appreciate the silver efex joke above, but two of its really good features are localized control, and the ability to play around with different filtration or individual colour control.

All of that said, in the end it's the pictures that matter, and I do like the dance shots.

[heed]

Great photos!

Another fun thing I've done with mine is using the art modes+video. We were at a wedding and I shot a lot of fun footage on the crowded dance floor in the "Grainy film" mode. It came out looking like some old-school 8mm.

Of course this will never beat dedicated software like Silver Efex, Alienskin, etc., but it isn't meant to. For me, it's a great way to compose to get a good idea of how it will look in B&W. Plus, the RAW+JPG means you don't have to choose in the end.

[spiderfrank]

come on guys... I saw the blown highlights, but I couldn't care less, those are not an issue for this kind of shots, imho, and so I disabled the " blue/orange warning" and decided not to worry: after all this is not a landscape. Raw+Jpeg is possible, and the "right way" for a serious job, but I like very much to have images 90% ok just out of the camera, with no need of big post-processing efforts: a few seconds, and ready to go

[srtiwari]

Originally Posted by spiderfrank

come on guys... I saw the blown highlights, but I couldn't care less, those are not an issue for this kind of shots, imho, and so I disabled the " blue/orange warning" and decided not to worry: after all this is not a landscape. Raw+Jpeg is possible, and the "right way" for a serious job, but I like very much to have images 90% ok just out of the camera, with no need of big post-processing efforts: a few seconds, and ready to go

I wonder if underexposing would have actually lost some detail in the shadows...

[spiderfrank]

all the shots are underesposed to "erase" the background. The limits are the girl's hairs and the black shirt of the second guitarist: another half stop and hairs and shirt would be lost in the black.

[robert blu]

Knowing how difficult is to take photo of artist playing in extreme light situation I find the pictures more than ok. And as already said for sure not worse than if done with film...at 5.000 iso (film? which film?).
robert

[kuzano]

Originally Posted by spiderfrank

Hi guys, some days ago I took some shots at a little flamenco show. It was night, and the lights were substantially red, so I decided to make black and white photos. I know all the manuals says to do the conversion at home, but I wanted to try what the camera was able do with it's settings.

Goes to show how wrong the manual is.

There is RTFM and then there is TTFMA.

[spiderfrank]

RTFM TTFMA ... ?? What do you mean?

[jonasv]

read the f****** manual
throw the f****** manual away
i guess?

[DNG]

Those are very good, I have been pleased with the E-M5 High ISO also, I just photographed a Past Prrsidents home, all (95%) at ISO 8000!!!... you'd be hard pressed to guess at what ISO by looking at them.

The RED filter is a high contrast B&W filter, so the highlights are representative IMO, and Only available in JPG as an OOC photo. So, you must shoot R+JPG to get an OOC B&W, or just use JPG. The Raw will need to be converted to a B&W.

The Red filter guaranteed great shadow and mid-tones, in low light, that's important. Plus, the highlights can be recovered in the RAW... you'd be surprised how much detail is hiding in those HL's.

[kuzano]

Originally Posted by jonasv

read the f****** manual
throw the f****** manual away
i guess?

Right you are!!

[spiderfrank]

ah ah ah!! Ok... Now I can understand! ;-)