How would I get this result with digital?

kshapero

kshapero

South Florida Man
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Not saying this is prize winning but this shot taken with an M3 and 50mm Cron with Illford HP4 Plus B/W film of my older daughter has a certain glow and texture that pleases me. How would I ever get that result with a digital camera? I speak more of ignorance than anything else. No PP done on this photo.

7583100160_bb7ee66b52_c.jpg
 
I'm sure it can be done but I wouldn't know how - my digital software was free from Picasa. There are very good photos on the digital black & white thread.
I do wonder if the highlights would be as pleasing to the eye with a digital version of this shot.
 
IT depends on exactly what aspects of the image style you want to try and reproduce and its often more of an art than a science. Over the last 6 months I've been working on trying to develop a digital B&W workflow that produces images I'm happy with purely out of necessity - no time to develop! At a high level I can suggest a few things to start with:
  1. Shoot in RAW
  2. Dont blow your highlights
  3. Recover shadows in post processing (RAW converter)
  4. Reduce the overall contrast to get more of a film look
  5. In a RAW converter, slightly increase "Clarity" (midtone contrast)
  6. Set your black and white points

Apart from this I find its just about fiddling to get what you're after...
 
Speaking as someone who prefers film over digital for B&W, this particular image doesn't do anything that you couldn't achieve with digital, the available light is low which is a strength of digital, blown highlights are easy to achieve with digital, all you'd need to do would be add some noise/grain. Perhaps not exactly the same but close enough.
 
bobbyrab said:
Speaking as someone who prefers film over digital for B&W, this particular image doesn't do anything that you couldn't achieve with digital, the available light is low which is a strength of digital, blown highlights are easy to achieve with digital, all you'd need to do would be add some noise/grain. Perhaps not exactly the same but close enough.
Click to expand...
How do you add noise/grain in digital?
 
I use Silver Efex Pro 2 (Lightroom plug-in). It can emulate the tone curves and grain look of many different B&W films, or you can fully customize it yourself. Here is my first shot at using SEP2 that I did a while back using a trial copy. It was so good that I ended buying it and now I use it for all of my digital B&W conversions.

large.jpg


Of course, there are other ways to achieve the look that you want. This is what I use.

--Warren
 
I think that look could be achieved from a well-exposed raw file in Lightroom 4. First the saturation levels eould be set to zero. I suspect the look of the bright regions could be duplicated by decreasing the highlight slider. This would just effect the contrast of the right side of the histogram.Then the shadow areas could be darkened using the appropriate Lightroom sliders. The Tone Curve panel would also be useful.

I don't add grain/noise to digital B&W photos. I record the raw images with ISO 1600 or 3200.

Honestly, I think the real challenge would be in producing an aesthetically pleasing print. Most of the digital printing world is geared toward color. So B&W printing requires expensive printers, ink and paper or access to a commercial lab that knows how to make B&W prints. I would not say a digital print could look exactly like a wet-chemistry print though.
 
In my very personal view we have finally come to the point where digital images can be processed to look at par or even better than film images. There is very very little left you can do with film you cannot do digitally. But getting there you need totally different skills and tools, including some considerable investments in the IT software, time for training and of course hardware.

I'm an IT guy myself and to be honest I resist to follow the digital path even when my photographic results could be better. I just don't need more IT in my life. I'm willing to pay a premium in terms of time and money and continue to work with the film process. If you really think about it the guys who really are gaming the system and sometimes getting big audiences are those who use cheap toy cameras. You just cannot imitate their work digitally.
 
does digital need to look like film to have legitimacy? It can never have the same authenticity without a negative although I see some are trying to convince others that raw files are on a par with a negative.
 
I'm also quite pleased with the B&W setting with my Sony NEX C3. Seems to do quite a good job for a fast result from camera.
U3357I1342343696.SEQ.0.jpg
 
Last 2 pics still look digital - not sayin' it's bad though. The lens used may have more of an impact than the medium.
 
I agree but i think you could fool the system if I fooled around with enough software. But by then my black and white film would have come back from the lab. :)
 
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