A walk with mono film

[Fozzybear]

I did post this in the photo sharing thread but I think that one gets ignored, which would explain why nothing had been added to it since the start of the year... apologies if it annoys anyone that I deleted that post and started a new thread instead.


I went for a walk last Sunday with my Nikon F80 and 50mm f/1.8 loaded with a roll of Kodak BW400CN mono (but colour processed) film. I headed south of my home to Galleyend and the WWII RADAR tower that is at the old Marconi Research (now BAe?) site, the only one of its type left. Was very dull and gray, which didn't suit the low contrast film but I've used Nikon Capture NX and Photoshop Elements 3 to process a few of the scanned negatives and try to get something usable out of the shots I took.

In Capture NX I used the selection tool and colorize to give this a hand-tinted look.

This had heavy processing in NX, including a couple of graduated curve adjustments and quite a bit of Control Point adjustment.

A bit of control point work here to prevent the sky burning out.

On the way home I photographed a little workshop in Great Baddow:

and to use up the last couple of frames I tried a window backlit shot of my other camera, a Nikon D50:

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

Not a fan of first shot but like the others. Second expecially looks like it has great potential for a classy image.
Gordon

[Tobers]

There's some very good contrast in those pics. More than you get with a digital B&W out of the camera using the camera B&W setting. I really like B&W and am working through some digital pics trying different processing methods. It's darn tricky stuff.

[Tobers]

There's some very good contrast in those pics. More than you get with a digital B&W out of the camera using the camera B&W setting. I really like B&W and am working through some digital pics trying different processing methods. It's darn tricky stuff.

[Saracenn]

Adobe Lightroom will blow your socks of with its Black and White conversions. You get a whole 8 sliders to play with as well as targeted adjustments. Then you can add a beautiful split tone to finish it off. Highly recommended if you're into B&W.

[Fozzybear]

The first one is a bit controversial, but it's just something I was experimenting with after looking at some hand-toned photos on the net. The contrast on the originals really was very, very low, I had to do a lot of selective adjustments to get the results here. I like the contrast and tones on the camera shot and the tower close-up, but the others have a mid-tone look I'm not quite enamored with. I spent a lot of time trying to get the mid-tones looking how I'd like and I haven't succeeded yet.

I'll keep at it though - and I might have a go at a mono version of that first shot too.

[Tobers]

Originally Posted by Saracenn

Adobe Lightroom will blow your socks of with its Black and White conversions. You get a whole 8 sliders to play with as well as targeted adjustments. Then you can add a beautiful split tone to finish it off. Highly recommended if you're into B&W.

Just downloaded and tried Lightroom. Pretty impressive. I'll have to do some more work with it to see exactly how I'd use it, but it seems to have everything bar detailed image editing (a Photoshop job). The B&W conversion is superb as you say, with the very quick ability to darken the sky for example by just sliding the blue slider to the left. Top stuff. I think I've found my permanent image management solution.

[Saracenn]

Lightroom will do all your global image retouching, so the stuff that doesn't involve layers, or retouching. Though it does have spot clone and heal tools and some noise reduction plus lens corrections (not distortions though).

It's great, and there's promises of significant updates in the near future.

For some great tutorials see the lists at:
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/ligh...tutorials.html

Also the fantastic book by Martin Evening.

Better stop now, otherwise it looks like I'm hijacking the thread.