rookie question: desaturate X black and white

dfields wrote on 5/6/2004, 5:47 AM

Hi,

i was just wondering what's the difference between the desaturate preset (HSL adjust plugin) and the Black and White plugin.
I believe both do same thing.

is this correct?

Do you think that is better to shoot in colors and then on post production change to black and white or is it better to shoot using the black and white of the camera?

if it is better to change in post, which of the methods above (desaturate or B&W) would be the better and lighter way?

thank you

Daniel

Comments

xgenei wrote on 10/14/2004, 1:42 AM

Well desaturation keeps the separate color channels. The B&W goes to grayscale only -- 8-bit. You lose a lot of image data.

By keeping the color channels and selectively filtering you can manipulate for subtlety. Even if you only tweak your color image before desaturation to grayscale, you are better off than with B&W conversion.

Also post is far more sophisticated than whatever your camera can give you. Remember that your camera is a CAPTURE DEVICE and not an editor. The ideal is to capture the maximum amount of image information -- and this happens to be in color. You wouldn't use your camera's built-in dissolves or titling owning Vegas would you?

Obviously using a DVPRO or better gamma will get a better basic picture.

Technology improvements are on the horizon that will capture a far more genuinely film-like image, with 4x greater tonal range. At that point it may be that some manufacturer will produce a super B&W raw image.

Remember that you can use classical black and white lighting methods, over-lens filters for the overall look (diffusion or mist) and for depth-of-field (ND + long zoom),

For today I have yet to see a really good image, and this shows up more in B&W, that wasn't shot on film and transferred.

I used to shoot nothing but B&W 35 & 2-1/4 and used a yellow filter (or other) for tonal "pleasing" or effect -- I had a good career when I was a kid doing that.

.