The MAGIC & ALLURE of the M8.....Is it For REAL

[emmawest72]

Interesting thread.

Helen,
Did you get the M8 for a specific reason? Well, you know I'm a film freak but why don't you just continue with the M2 as you seem to get along very well together

Digital black and white is no easy task when you have had experience with film as there always seem to be something missing and you just can't describe it. I also use aperture and I have tried the silverefex pro which was really nice but in the end I was never really satisfied. I have since decided to enjoy BW film instead of battling with softwares and plugins. I even bought a Durst enlarger recently!!

Good luck.

 

[robsteve]

Marc:

Hold on, I'll add a few pixels radius of blur and some noise and they'll look more like film!


:ROTFL: :ROTFL: :ROTFL:

(kidding of course -- there definitely is something tangible and preferable to B&W film )

I was playing around with a high contrast shot last night and noticed the clarity slider in lightroom urns to blur if you set it to negative values. I have not used clarity in the past, so I don't know if this is something new.

Robert

 

[robsteve]

Here is one done with the Irakly method, with a few changes. It was kind of grainy/gritty anyway because of the smoke and 1250iso. I made it worse by turning noise reduction off in Lightroom and later sharpening in Photoshop. At 100% the noise actually looks a lot like film grain.

This had the black slide up near 100%, lots of fill and clarity and then a custom curve.

 

[fotografz]

Marc:

Hold on, I'll add a few pixels radius of blur and some noise and they'll look more like film!


:ROTFL: :ROTFL: :ROTFL:

(kidding of course -- there definitely is something tangible and preferable to B&W film )

:grin:

 

[fotografz]

Looks like digital transparently masquerading as film

BTW, you should see Irakly's film work.

 

[helenhill]

Interesting thread.

Helen,
Did you get the M8 for a specific reason? Well, you know I'm a film freak but why don't you just continue with the M2 as you seem to get along very well together

Digital black and white is no easy task when you have had experience with film as there always seem to be something missing and you just can't describe it. I also use aperture and I have tried the silverefex pro which was really nice but in the end I was never really satisfied. I have since decided to enjoy BW film instead of battling with softwares and plugins. I even bought a Durst enlarger recently!!

Good luck.

Well I did it ..... its now Film all the way
I've joined your 'Film Freak' Club William :ROTFL:

There is something so satisfying about Developing my own Film
(Flawed as it is.....)

and NOT sitting in front of a Computer doing PP

I prefer to Adorn my Walls
with 'Atmospheric' B&W Treasures
and MY Favorite work has been on Film

Just got a 35 1971 Canadian Cron
and starting to appreciate the 35 Frame of Mind

I Don't know how to put it
but it breathes and seems more Real
It may be Harder Work but for me its Worth it...:grin:

I Will still PEEK & ADMIRE my M8 Friends
Best To ALL...

 

[fotografz]

All kidding aside (I WAS kidding, except the part about seeing Irakly's film works).

I'm a confirmed digital user. Certifiable actually. No going back to being a film purist.

But it cheeses me off that I can't get the B&W look I want. And I haven't seen it from very many others either.

One observation I've had is that B&W film almost effortlessly produces that graphic snap ... where the whites look whiter but still have tone, and the blacks blacker with detail still apparent ... all without sacrificing the middle tones.

Now this can't be just because it's film ... scans are digital. So, it seems to me that it should be doable with digital capture using the right recipe. (Either that, or all the stuff about dynamic range of the digital capture is a load.)

This is pretty important to me, because my primary subject matter is wearing all white and all black

Actually, I don't think film necessarily fairs all that well on the web ... or a computer screen for that matter. It's the prints ... even scanned film ... it's still the prints.

But here are two very similar situational shots ... the digital shot on the bottom looks pretty good ... yet the film shot looks a bit more "snappy" ... at least to my eye ... and especially in print.

 

[helenhill]

Well Marc
The First Shot says it ALL ... Pop .Snappy, Spot On Crisp

The trousers in the 2nd shot
hardly give that Beautiful Blk contrast against the White however I DO LOVE the Reflection in the Glass

 

[nei1]

Hold on, I'll add a few pixels radius of blur and some noise and they'll look more like film!


Dont think that"ll help:thumbup:


Jack ,have you ever used a monochrome back?I saw theres a mf back made by megavision,what sort of resuts would that give,? thanks...........Neil

 

[Terry]

Well I did it ..... its now Film all the way
I've joined your 'Film Freak' Club William :ROTFL:

There is something so satisfying about Developing my own Film
(Flawed as it is.....)

and NOT sitting in front of a Computer doing PP

I prefer to Adorn my Walls
with 'Atmospheric' B&W Treasures
and MY Favorite work has been on Film

Just got a 35 1971 Canadian Cron
and starting to appreciate the 35 Frame of Mind

I Don't know how to put it
but it breathes and seems more Real
It may be Harder Work but for me its Worth it...:grin:

I Will still PEEK & ADMIRE my M8 Friends
Best To ALL...

Wait are you saying that you sold the M8????

 

[Kphelan]

I'm not sure what the hubub is about the M8 and black and white. I think the M8 does B&W as well, or as poorly, as any digital camera. Better than most IMO. I think it's an issue of digital B&W and how the tonal curve is different from film. It's different; it's better, it's worse, it's both. It's different. If you are hooked on film, digital is not for you. My main criticism of digital B&W is that the sensors are so sensitive you never get a deep "endless" black, like that produced by clear film base. Even in dark nightclub jazz shots the deepest shadows have readable detail. In my expereience M8 files can be made to look ok (to me). I use ACR/CS4 workflow. Below are a few M8 black and white files. [Mike: I love your portraits!]

Scratch that. I attached 4 files and previewed them and they all looked oversharpened into Rice Krispies territory. Jack, does the upload process here compress/re-compress upload files? My jpegs look fine on my screen and french-fried after being uploaded.

Kent

 

[Jack]

Hi Kent:


Note that the GetDPI Gallery software and the forum software are two separate items, merged together in the background on the servers, and do treat images quite differently. If you use "attach" instead of a link to a gallery, the forum's simple upload software automatically down-sizes the attacahment to 900 pixels and uses a pretty simple engine to do that. If you use our free gallery, the software will generate three files -- a native size, a thumb and a 900 pixel version, but here the gallery's engine is quite good and does not deliver the rice-crispies the forum's simple attach engine does. So,

1) IF you are going to use "attach" then my suggestion is to process the file optimally to 900 pixels in your image editor FIRST.

2) Or use our free gallery to first upload images of any size and then link to them using the image link button in the thread post tool bar.

 

[Kphelan]

Thanks Jack, I appreciate the update. Here then are a couple of M8 black and white images.

http://forum.getdpi.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=4333&c=5&userid=201

http://forum.getdpi.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=4334&c=5&userid=201

http://forum.getdpi.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=4336&c=5&userid=201

http://forum.getdpi.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=4338&c=5&userid=201

http://forum.getdpi.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=4339&c=5&userid=201

Admin Note: I am editing your post to embed them directly. Note that in the links above, there are two pre-generated URL's beneath each image. The first is the actual image URL to embed directly as I did below using the icon or IMG tags, then a thumb-link that if inserted automatically posts a linkable thumbnail to the image in the gallery -- I added one for the last image as an example :

 

[Jack]

And PS: Your conversions look great to me as is! But if you want a bit more of that film look, you can kill of the very low shadow detail by sliding your ACR/LR black slider up to around 6 or 8, which also boosts contrast a bit more too...