04.13
Last day of Easter break: Rain and cold. Perfect for black and white photography. I decided to try to get some of the old “film look”, like Kodak Tri-X, using Lightroom develop presets, so I turned the ISO up to about 2500 on my D300 and .. went to town.
Going to town.
D300, ISO 2000, 17-55mm f/2.8, 1/400, f/10.
Always RAW
I always shoot RAW (Nikon NEF), also when I want black and white. With NEF files I can do all the adjustments later using Lightroom (or other software), instead of relying on the camera to do them for me (and saving to JPEG or TIFF with fewer adjustments possible).
So, for this experiment, I really only needed to think about “grain”, which means high ISO. Using a high ISO results in more noise from the sensor and also higher contrast, which was what I wanted.
ISO
How high ISO? At ISO 3200 the sharpness of my D300 is not that great, because the noise affects sharpness and not just noise. After a bit of experimenting, I think that ISO 2000 or 2500 gives the best results. Digital Photography Review has a very thorough review of the D300 and ISO performance.
Sample images
Some more images (nothing fancy, just testing):
Mirror.
D300, ISO 2000, 17-55mm f/2.8, 1/200, f/7.1.
Pizza chef.
D300, ISO 3200, 17-55mm f/2.8, 1/125, f/5.6.
Oslo architecture (not exactly the Opera).
D300, ISO 2500, 17-55mm f/2.8, 1/400, f/10.
Fence.
D300, ISO 200, 17-55mm f/2.8, 1/200, f/7.1.
Parking King (not my car).
D300, ISO 2000, 17-55mm f/2.8, 1/320, f/9.
My “Grainy B&W” Lightroom preset
I did some small changes to the basic “Grayscale Mix”, decreased the noise reduction (to get more “grain”), tweaked the Sharpening (even more “grain”) and some other small changes.
The result is this “Grainy B&W” preset.
Better black and white presets
After fiddling around with my home-baked black and white preset, I figured I should do a quick Google search and see what else was out there on the Interweb. Guess what? Someone has already done a lot of work in making black and white develop presets for Lightroom.
PresetHeaven, for instance has an overview of 34 free black & white film presets for Lightroom (actually, it is 17 presets with and without auto tone).
All the presets are made by Michael W. Gray at LifeInDigitalFilm. These are the 17 films:
- Agfa Scala 200X
- Agfapan 100
- Agfapan 25
- Agfapan 400
- Fuji Acros 100
- Ilford Delta 100
- Ilford Delta 3200
- Ilford Delta 400 Pro
- Ilford Delta 400
- Ilford FP4 125
- Ilford HP5 400
- Ilford Pan F 50
- Ilford SFX 200
- Ilford XP2 Super 400
- Kodak TMAX 100
- Kodak TMAX 400
- Kodak Tri-X 400
LifeInDigitalFilm has a lot of film presets for Lightroom, you can buy all of them for USD 9.99:
“Please consider purchasing LIDF’s Cold Storage Collection, featuring every film preset released since inception of LIDF Plus 12 exclusive presets for supporters of the site. All proceeds support the ongoing development of LifeInDigitalFilm and its presets”
Comparison
Parking King, “Grainy BW” preset (the same image as above):
Parking King using LifeInDigitalFilm’s “Kodak Tri-X 400″ preset:
Split image for your perusing pleasure (click for larger version):
Left: LifeInDigitalFilm’s Tri-X 400 preset.
Right: “Grainy B&W” preset.
How do you convert your images to black and white? Any recommendations or tips? Please use the comment field below – thanks!
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Thank you for mentioning my site, LifeInDigitalFilm. I would like to note that the “34 free B&W film presets” from PresetsHeaven is a little dated. My newer emulations are more accurate than that particular set. There is nothing wrong with my original collection, but I feel my newer releases found on my blog are more accurate and better looking in general.
Thanks again for the mention!
This is brilliant work Christian. Downloaded your present and cant wait to try it. Funny I was playing with the Kalitype iron silver look last night and the thought did cross my mind to turn it into a preset. Will get there eventually.
Great work here Christian!
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Thanks for this. I have been using your D300 preset for about a week, and it rocks. So I’m definitely going to give this a shot. I’ve just come back from a trip to Shanghai, and loads of the images need a good b+w conversion. I was just about to look for them, when you do the job for me.
I cut my teeth on FP4+, so I’m glad to see it’s included in Mike Gray’s preset list.
Nice shots, too, especially that pizza chef. Keep doing what you do.
Michael: I’ll buy the whole kaboodle when for the next black & white session. Impressive work! Good luck with the move to Wordpress (and http://www.lifeindigitalfilm.net/) btw – maybe there are some useful tips under Technical on this blog?
Amit: Thanks! I really like the Kalitype look on your images. Any chance of a Lightroom preset for that..? And: What kind of post-processing have you done to the color image on http://karmakars.com/articles/queen-victoria-building-sydney.php?
David: I’m very happy to hear that the presets rock! I remember FP4+ from when I worked in a photo shop in Oslo. Only the coolest (and often Leica-carrying) customers bought Ilford film :-) Funny that we both feature pictures of our desks in our blogs: your, mine. Looking forward to seeing Shanghai pictures.
Update after a couple of days of using these presets:
They rock. Period. Totally unstoppable. Thanks again for getting them together on your blog, and especially for sharing like you did. A lesser being would have kept them quiet… Check my flickr stream for examples, the Shanghai pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveb_za/ , or check my blog for some stories to go with the pics. And that’s enough shameless plugging for myself.
I think we have pics of our desks because, as bloggers and photoheads, we’re tied to that thing for an inordinatley large amount of time. More than we’re out shooting, definitely.
Certainly not one of the coolest customers: I used to buy my FP4+ in 100m cans and then scrounge round the print shops to get old 35mm cartridges with the tongues sticking out and roll on my own 40-frame film spools. It was the only way to afford that film.