black and white

[liveinlite]

I just purchased the D10 and ws surprised that I could not switch to black and white directly on the camera. Can this only be done through the software?

[iwatkins]

Hi liveinlite,

I assume you mean the Canon 10D ? Well, no you can't. You have to do this in software later. It isn't surprising really as B&W is usually only found on point and shoot digitals.

B&W in software tends to give better results as you always start with a colour image, so you always have a colour image. Doing it in software often gives much better results as you have more control over the contrast of the image which is what B&W is all about.

You will get used to it. I usually take a look at all my images once processed for any that might benefit from the B&W conversion. Some work better than the colour image, some don't.

Cheers

Ian

[Longwatcher]

The reason it is a good thing the 10D doesn't do B+W, is each pixel has a color filter over it 25% of them are red filtered, 25% blue filtered, and 50% are green filtered. For P&S cameras the B+W is a nifty gadget so you don't have to do anything after taking the picture, but with the 10D they presume you will almost always be doing post processing (as in photoshop) so they don't bother with unecessary gadgets that could be done with far better results using photoshop (or similiar tool).

I can't think of any device on the 10D which does not serve some photograhic purpose from the camera perspective and is more of a gimic. (except maybe the basic modes).

They probably could have included it, but I have found that I can get better B+W from color in photoshop then straight from my P&S. So I wouldn't shoot in B+W mode if there was one on the 10D (unless it worked really well). That said, I would like a camera that had a bayer filter that moved out the way to shoot B+W.

Just my opinion,

[stopbath]

I took a look at the online web pages for the 10D and you can customize a configuration to lower saturation. This might produce the black and white shot you're looking for although you'ld have better control if you waited until editing stage later.

[Tategoi]

Although PS7 has a good Desaturate mode, another trick, especially if working in 16bit color, is to select Channel Mixer and then tick the grey scale box. Then try upping the contrast a little and play with Curves.

You can get some stunning results this way and you get to keep the original color image.

Who needs a B&W feature on a camera eh?

Good luck.