There are a ton of good brains on this forum ... and Guy has been good enough to load M9 DNGs for people to play with even if they do not have a M9.
Here's my dilemma:
So far I have not been able to get decent B&W conversions out of the M9 ... and trust me, I've been working at it (I'll share the journey later in this post).
IMHO, except for a couple of B&Ws from Riccis BUT not all of them, I've yet to see acceptable B&W conversions ... or at least not consistently equal to the M8 ... or for that matter my D3X ... and most certainly not anywhere in the league of B&W film. Guy tried some, I went through all of Juno's delightful Crete images (wonderful color, not so wonderful B&W) and so on. I managed a few decent ones, but it's a low yield.
BTW, I'd be eternally grateful if Riccis shared how he is converting including camera settings if any.
Now this is NOT meant as an evaluation of other works or subject matters, but for me a M is not for shooting butterflies or flowers or stuff like that ... as wonderful as those images have been. I can do that with a $2,000. 24 meg image stabilized Sony A850 and Zeiss optics. Riccis is more in the subject zone that I think of when I think M. Above all, I think B&W, candid, and street when it comes to an M ... except for travel like how Juno used it. In other words, IT HAS TO DO BOTH. Very important to me as 70% of my M work is B&W. I suspect I'm not alone here.
So I've spent hours and hours with no joy. I tried C1 Pro latest version, and tried Jack's suggestion of other profiles including "Film High Contrast" ... I've tried Gradient Map B&W in Photoshop (i.e., tone mapping) which is usually pretty close with the M8 and D3X ... I have an array of actions for B&W conversions in my PS actions pallet including one from Jeff Ascough called "Jeff's Main Squeeze", which is designed to juice up lower contrast mid-tone files, I have a bunch of Presets in Light-Room, a couple of which are one button solutions for most any camera I own. I tried all versions of B&W conversions in PS and LR as well as C1. I tried my old trick of discarding the red and blue channels and converting the green channel to B&W and Gradient mapping it, which often works but didn't for M9 files.
The closest so far has been the stock LR Preset called B&W High Contrast ... but the skin tones go flat and brights get very close to not holding any tone, so if I goose the contrast any more they'd disappear.
I haven't bought Nik Silver Effects Pro yet, so if someone has it and has a few moments to apply it to one of Guy's DNGs (preferably something with people in it), that would be great.
I was going to sell my M8, but until this is solved (and we WILL solve it), it's not going anywhere.
Any further suggestions? (i.e., HELP)!
-Marc
Here's my dilemma:
So far I have not been able to get decent B&W conversions out of the M9 ... and trust me, I've been working at it (I'll share the journey later in this post).
IMHO, except for a couple of B&Ws from Riccis BUT not all of them, I've yet to see acceptable B&W conversions ... or at least not consistently equal to the M8 ... or for that matter my D3X ... and most certainly not anywhere in the league of B&W film. Guy tried some, I went through all of Juno's delightful Crete images (wonderful color, not so wonderful B&W) and so on. I managed a few decent ones, but it's a low yield.
BTW, I'd be eternally grateful if Riccis shared how he is converting including camera settings if any.
Now this is NOT meant as an evaluation of other works or subject matters, but for me a M is not for shooting butterflies or flowers or stuff like that ... as wonderful as those images have been. I can do that with a $2,000. 24 meg image stabilized Sony A850 and Zeiss optics. Riccis is more in the subject zone that I think of when I think M. Above all, I think B&W, candid, and street when it comes to an M ... except for travel like how Juno used it. In other words, IT HAS TO DO BOTH. Very important to me as 70% of my M work is B&W. I suspect I'm not alone here.
So I've spent hours and hours with no joy. I tried C1 Pro latest version, and tried Jack's suggestion of other profiles including "Film High Contrast" ... I've tried Gradient Map B&W in Photoshop (i.e., tone mapping) which is usually pretty close with the M8 and D3X ... I have an array of actions for B&W conversions in my PS actions pallet including one from Jeff Ascough called "Jeff's Main Squeeze", which is designed to juice up lower contrast mid-tone files, I have a bunch of Presets in Light-Room, a couple of which are one button solutions for most any camera I own. I tried all versions of B&W conversions in PS and LR as well as C1. I tried my old trick of discarding the red and blue channels and converting the green channel to B&W and Gradient mapping it, which often works but didn't for M9 files.
The closest so far has been the stock LR Preset called B&W High Contrast ... but the skin tones go flat and brights get very close to not holding any tone, so if I goose the contrast any more they'd disappear.
I haven't bought Nik Silver Effects Pro yet, so if someone has it and has a few moments to apply it to one of Guy's DNGs (preferably something with people in it), that would be great.
I was going to sell my M8, but until this is solved (and we WILL solve it), it's not going anywhere.
Any further suggestions? (i.e., HELP)!
-Marc