I suppose there are 4 digicam manufacturers which are providing methods to shoot higher black and white, although I feel it’s nonetheless not like taking pictures black and white movie and generally it’s a must to do some tinkering with the digicam settings.
Prime of my listing is Olympus/OM System, each for its black and white mono profiles, through the Inventive Dial on the OM-3 and on the E-P7 and PEN-F earlier than that, and for its black and white Artwork Filters, which could be as wildly contrasty, grainy and ‘sooty’ as you want. You possibly can even add borders and vignettes and firming results, although the latter aren’t nice, to be truthful.
Fujifilm ought to get some credit score too, for the management you’ve got over distinction and grain results through person ‘recipes’, and for placing Movie Simulations on their very own dial on the X-T50 and X-M5 I don’t suppose the ACROS movie simulation is something particular by itself, however if you happen to tinker with the parameters you can also make one thing fairly good. Certainly there’s an entire inventive group round Fujifilm ‘recipes’.
The one factor is, this at present depends on making use of recipe settings supplied by different photographers manually by yourself digicam. You do get various management over the Movie Simulation settings in-camera too, with an optionally available grain impact as properly – however it will be even higher if a few of these extra inventive black and white seems have been out there in-camera proper from the beginning.
That is the place Nikon goes a step additional with its Nikon Imaging Cloud ecosphere and its downloadable Inventive Imaging Recipes – the current Nikon Zf firmware 2 replace means you need to use these with this contemporary retro traditional. Right here once more, although, these are based mostly across the considerably restricted tone and shade tweaks provided within the digicam.
You may not expect my final candidate. It’s the iPhone and, particularly, its Silvertone and Noir filters. Silvertone has a pleasant pale firming impact that may lose its novelty quickly sufficient however is far more delicate and interesting than the crude ‘sepia’ results in most cameras. And the Noir filter is a gloriously contrasty no-holds-barred black and white rendering that I like.
So what’s so troublesome about black and white simulations for digicam makers? I’ve tried Panasonic’s L.Monochrome profile, for instance, and simply discovered it… meh.
My Canon EOS R8 has a monochrome image model with all kinds of parameters together with shade filter impact, firming, distinction, saturation, however the outcomes are nonetheless fairly bland, fairly ‘protected’.
Panasonic has accomplished one thing new, although, with its Actual Time LUTs. These should not simply digicam maker particular tweaks for various picture kinds. LUTs are used broadly all through cinematography and filmmaking to provide totally different (typically VERY totally different) inventive seems, and LUTs should not a proprietary format.
In precept you need to use any LUTs from any provider in cameras just like the Lumix S9 – and sure, you may get black and white LUTs. I look ahead to making an attempt this out after I get the possibility. However LUTs can’t add grain, vignettes or picture borders, all of which might deliver black and white photos to life, and digicam makers (besides OM System) appear reluctant to take this correctly on board.
Maybe that is the issue – digicam makers taking part in it too protected. What I truly need from a black and white simulation is a few of the character of black and white movies – the depth and density that you just don’t get from merely desaturating a daily picture, grain results based mostly on precise movies like Kodak Tri-X or Ilford FP4, and possibly some firming results which are truly wealthy however delicate, and that requires just a bit grading finesse, not any nice leaps ahead in expertise,
It does appear to me that if digicam makers need customers to have the ability to generate distinctive, evocative and characterful photos in-camera, then they should go all-in with the processing results and really simulate movie correctly.
Black and white pictures isn’t simply common pictures with out the colour. It’s clean, wealthy and deep, or uncooked, punchy and gritty, and I simply don’t suppose we get that with most digicam black and white modes. You get a monochrome digital picture with a pleasant, protected histogram, however that’s about all.
What worries me is that newcomers to digital pictures will have a look at this and suppose black and white pictures is boring. If that’s all we’ve started working with, then sadly that’s proper.
Take a look at our information to the finest black-and-white 35mm movies