articles/Monochrome/digitalmonochrome-page1

Digital Monochrome - part 1 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

by Paul Gallagher Published 01/02/2012

It occurred to me during a recent lecture that I do not often cover my workflow from full colour RAW file to finished black and white print. This was highlighted by one of the attendees of the lecture who asked why it was, that when I was showing my black and white workflow I always begin with the scan from a black and white negative. I must admit they were right, considering most of the people who attend my lectures are digital users and there is a certain process to go through before the image even begins to look monochrome. I have remedied my ways and the following is my journey from colour to fully finished monochrome image, ready to print.

For this example I have not chosen the perfect, colour camera RAW file with which to convert. On the contrary, I chose one of the RAW files that I was somewhat disappointed with. At the time I made the exposure I was on a single-width, busy footpath in the gorges of the Chamonix valley, in France, and I had very little time to set up the image and make the exposure before I was surrounded by a blend of folk who ranged from interested in what I was doing to becoming down right frustrated by my blocking their way to the top!

The image was taken on a Nikon D700, fitted with a 24 to 70mm lens. The ISO was set at 200 and the camera was mounted on a tripod (hence taking up the width of the entire path!). The camera was set on manual and the lens was at 28mm. All I had time to do was average out the exposure, which resulted in five seconds at f18 and I fitted a polariser to cut the reflection from the surface of the water and soften its appearance. After the exposure I looked at the histogram and things seemed okay but I knew that I had a little bit of clipping at either end of the histogram in both the highlights and the shadows. I put my camera away and apologised for being an obstruction and made my way down and back to the car. Although the histogram on the back of your DSLR is extremely helpful, do not take it as truly accurate, because often it is not. It does provide a good overall guide to how your exposure was centred. Often I will adjust my exposure away from either end of the histogram to prevent any unwanted surprises when I return to my computer with large areas of blown highlights and blocked shadows. On this occasion though, I did not have the choice, so I had to work with what I brought home with me!

Fig 1 shows what I was presented with when I first opened the file. With the highlight and shadow clipping warning switched on in Adobe Camera RAW you can see the problem areas with the shadow clipping in blue and the highlight clipping in red. Normally what I do at this stage is switch these warnings on and off to reveal what I have beneath and to also establish how far I need to go to recover what is needed in the way of detail.

• Digital Monochrome page 1
  
• Digital Monochrome page 2
  
• Digital Monochrome page 3
  
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• Digital Monochrome page 9
  

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