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Create great mono JPEGs in-camera
Techniques
24 October 2007 09:35
One of the greatest advantages of shooting digital over film is that you can shoot both colour and black & white versions without the hassle of changing cameras or films. You can even shoot everything in colour and decide which to convert to black & white later on. And, if you shoot in RAW format, you can use exactly the same camera settings for both image versions.
To get the best black & white results from JPEGs, however, you need to change a couple of settings from those you’d normally use.
The main setting to consider is in-camera sharpening. For colour JPEGs this is often set to the normal or high settings, but both of these can cause problems with lines and halos around some details (for instance, those areas adjoining blue sky) when you convert these images to black & white.
To solve the problem, turn the in-camera sharpening off, then remember to use your software to sharpen the images afterwards, before you print the image.
Another potential problem area is contrast. To combat under and overexposure in high contrast subjects, you may need use a lower contrast setting in order that the camera can capture a wider range of tones. Adjust the tonal range settings on your DSLR using the same Optimize image or Picture Style menus as you did for Image Sharpening.