The City of Arts and Sciences

Fuji XT-2, XF 16-55 f/2.8 R LM WR



Fuji XT-2, XF 10-24mm f/4 R OIS

More on Fuji Black and White

Cádiz, Spain
Fuji XT-2, XF 16-55 f/2.8 R LM WR, f/9, 1/640, 30mm

Vivid blue sky and bright white buildings create a perfect setting for black and white images. Processed in lightroom from RAW, I love the simplicity of images like this, Fuji files allow for pushing the blue almost to black in Post, giving me a super high contrast. 

I tried Acros presets but my standard process in Lightroom worked better here, very little ghosting at edges and deep contrast helped keep a nice clean image.

More images from Fuji here

Ross

Images In light

Archived Images

Finding an old image in the archives that was overlooked is always nice, I frequently review my archive to see whats available and I often find an image I like. This is a good reason to not delete every image you don't like when you download to your external drive.

I often read of people saying to delete images you don't like. Disk space is cheap, you can get 3 or 4 terabytes of disk space for $100 these days, so better to just hang on to those images and review them later.

The above image I took in Nov of 2015, but I somehow missed this image in black and white, today I really like it. So hang on to those old images, you never know what gems you might have hidden in the archive.

Ross

Images In Light

Shooting Black and White with the Fuji X-T2

Fuji X-T2, XF 23 f/1.4 R, 1/850 sec, f/8

Fuji X-T2, XF 23 f/1.4 R, 1/550 sec, f/6.4

This camera begs to be shot black and white, just put it in the ACROS film simulation mode and look through the view finder. Yes its not as simple as that, but it helps to look through a view finder and see the world in black and white. It also helps to see those image previews that way too.

When in ACROS mode though, you see that high contrast black and white image before taking the shot, to me it simplifies the seeing in black and white, which is not always as easy as it sounds.

I tend to shoot a lot more black and white with my X-T2 than I do with my 5D Mk IV, a lot has to do with the ability to see the image in the view finder. The way Fuji images are rendered in black and white is another attraction to shooting that way.

Fuji X-T2, XF 23 f/1.4 R, 1/550 sec, f/8

Fuji X-T2, XF 56 f/1.2 R, 1/280 sec, f/2.5

Ross 

Images In Light

Canon 5D Mk IV field trip

Canon 5D Mk IV, EF 70-200 f/4 L IS, f/7.1, 135mm, 1/5 sec 

So far so good with the 5D Mk IV, finally got to take it out for a shoot, even though the conditions weren't ideal, I made the trip down to Mt Rainier. Though the Mountain wasn't in full view I was treated to some nice views of Little Tahoma, clouds swirled around its peak and I tried out the built in intervoltometer, its nice to have that feature built in now, instead of having to dig in to my bag for my remote. The 30 mp is ideal for the extra room to crop and the dynamic range is really exceptional. It renders black and white very nicely, less artifacts in the sky when you push the blue channel. Clouds are rendered especially well with the new sensor, a great subject to test a camera on.

Canon 5D Mk IV, EF 70-200 f/4 L IS, f/11, 121mm, 1/80 sec

The shot from Kerry park is one of my favorite places to shoot a cityscape and an excellent place to test a camera, I know it so well I can easily judge a cameras IQ when shooting here. Colors are the same Canon colors I've come to love. The detail in these images is quit amazing.

Lightroom 6.7 was released last week which supports the 5D Mk IV, quick work by Adobe. File sizes are quite large and it does take a bit more time to download from my CF card. However that's not a big issue compared to the whole process.

For both of these images I used Live View with the touch screen controle. Live view is something Canon is very good with and implementing the touch screen feature makes it almost seamless. Metering is as usual, excellent, especially with live view.

Shadow noise is what every one wants to know about, so far I'm very pleased, no more color noise or banding in shadows, noise that does appear after pushing shadows is very fine grained and un-obtrusive. Canon  has done a great job on this new sensor and I'm very pleased with the results so far. Further review of the 5D Mk IV will be upcoming. Stay tuned.

Ross

Images In Light

Recent Black and White Conversions

The Old Man of Storr
converted with Capture One Pro

Horse Tail Falls, Yosemite National Park

converted with Lightroom

 The Alabama Hills, Eastern Sierra

converted with Lightroom

I am currently trying to asses Capture One Pro to determine if it can replace Lightroom 6, pretty soon Lightroom will be a cloud based subscription model only and I don't want to go that route. I don't want another monthly bill and then end up with nothing to show for it if I stop. Thats where the difference is with Lightroom CC. So far I am liking what I see with Capture one Pro. It may even work better in some ways, I need a little more time with it to see if it would really work with my post flow.

Ross

Images In Light

Cambridge, England

St Johns College

Winter in Yosemite

Image: D800E, AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II
f/7.1, 100mm, 1/500 sec

Image: D800E, AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II 
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Monochrome

 

5D Mk III, EF 24-70 f/2.8 L II, Lee 10 stop ND filter, 5 sec at f/11.

Garrapata Beach

Black and White conversion done in Lightroom. I feel sometimes monochrome images can better convey mood than color and at other times color more efficiently tells the story. Regardless, telling the story is the key to an image, not what camera or what software was used. Composition and understanding of how your camera works are far better than your cameras ability to recover shadows or print large.

Ross

Images In Light

Incidental Black and White

The Bay Bridge: 5D Mk III, EF24-70 f/2.8 II L

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Its not always easy to see in black and white, I use my iPhone 6 sometimes for visualizing what a scene may look like in black and white, when I set it to B and W it is a very useful tool for that.

The City by the Bay image above was a super high contrast scene that had little color other than the very bright sun, it made an ideal setting for black and white photography. My initial thought was to wait for sunset and shoot a low light scene, but this light presented itself to me, so I walked down the bank until the bridge blocked the sun and revealed the the beams that where initially hidden by the veiling glare of the bright sun.

Metering in live view helped to reduce the contrast so I could reveal detail in the bridge and still have the light beams highlighted on the city.

Another image I didn't originally see in B and W. I like both
the color and the B and W versions.

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More Black and White images here

Ross 

Images In Light

Lightroom - Black and White

 Image: 5D Mk III, 70-200f/4L IS, 150mm at f/11, 1/125th sec, tripod.
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Making black and white images with Lightroom is very easy and pretty effective, the hard part is choosing the right image to use.

Fortunately, Lightroom has made it so easy to make B and W images, its just a button press away, after normal processing; curves, shadows and highlights, etc.. go to the adjustments tab and just select B & W, then all that's left to do is slide the color bars, for example, to darken or lighten a blue sky just slide the blue slider to get the right effect, remember, contrast is your friend in a B and W image.

White balance can also be used to brighten are darken the image and split tone will add warmth or coolness to your image, the great thing about Lightroom is this wont effect the original image. I will usually make a virtual copy of the color image to create my B and W image from so I have it to compare.

Things to look out for; ghosting around high contrast areas and banding in solid colors when you go to extremes with the sliders, ghosting can usually be fixed with PS, but banding requires backing off on the slider.

There are also a lot of black and white presets out there on the web, do a search and you will find loads of free presets you can download, including these from Adobe, no need to pay for presets there are lots of free ones on the web and tutorials on how to make and install your own, see this link.

Ross

Images In Light

Contrast and Black and White

Image: 5D Mk II, 70-200 f4 IS L - North Cascade range just before Leavenworth
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Image: 5D Mk II, 70-200 f4 IS L - North Cascade range just before Leavenworth
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High contrast images are the ones that make for good black and white prints, especially if you can get an even exposure across the frame.

Rock, snow, blue sky and clouds, all with sun on them in the late afternoon worked well to turn these two images to black and white and thanks to the wonders of image stabilization, I was able to shoot these hand held through the sun roof of my buddy's SUV, while driving down Hwy 2 in early March. Images processed in Lightroom 3 and CS5.

Ross

Images In Light

Winter Forest

Image: B and W Forest, 5DMkII, 70-200 f4 IS L at 116 mm, f11

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Well, what I thought was going to be the last chance to shoot fall color at Mt Rainier, turned in to a cold a snowy day with the temperature right at 32 deg. Paradise valley (above) was cold and moody, it turned out to produce some interesting compositions including this on that I cropped to remove the trunks of the trees and the square format worked nice. See the full image here.

Ross Murphy Images In Light

Black and White

Image: Seattle B and W, 5D Mk II, 16-35 f2.8 L II..

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Image: Mt Baker, 5D Mk II, 17-40 F4 L, 3 Stop GND soft. B and W in Lightroom and CS4.

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Black and white is something I have become fond of lately,the images evoke a different emotion than color and I'm at a stage where I want to experiment a little more and try to put more feeling in to my work, I am not yet happy with the way I process the images, but I am experimenting with different ways, the above image was taken B and W in camera and processed with DPP and CS4, my other options include Lightroom, but I am yet to come up with a combination I like for my final work flow, so a little more research and some playing around I hope to come up with the right recipe. Getting just the right look and feel to a black and white image is harder than color images in my opinion. The best thing that digital has given me is the ability to experiment with out the cost of film.

Ross Murphy Images In Light