Today’s Post by Joe Farace
These days most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras offer built-in black & white or sepia capture modes and some even offer other options. Canon’s Nostalgia Picture Style, for example, that let you enhance the gray tones in an image while making the rest of the colors less vibrant producing an old-fashioned hand-colored look.
Sure, you can always make these kinds of adjustments after the fact using Adobe Photoshop or your favorite digital imaging software but shooting directly in black and white impacts how you see while making the image and getting instant feedback helps focus your vision.
Tip #1: I’m not afraid of losing the color image for future use because I can always capture color and monochrome image files at the same time and so can you! Almost every camera offers the ability to simultaneously capture RAW+JPEG files and these same cameras also allow you to capture monochrome only images as JPEG files. If you set your camera for RAW+JPEG capture then select the monochrome effect that you want, you’ll end up with two files: one in color (RAW) and the other in black and white (JPEG.)
How I made this photo: I photographed this Oldsmobile at Castle Rock, Colorado’s always wonderful Father’s Day car show. camera used was my old, but beloved Olympus E-P3 with Olympus M.14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II R lens at 17mm. The Program mode exposure, my favorite for use at car shows, was 1/500 sec at f/10 and ISO 200. This year’s show is this coming Saturday, June 18, 2022 and the show runs from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM. he show is organized and produced by a partnership of the Vintage Car Club and the Castle Rock Downtown Merchants Association. There will be live bands, food trucks and a Kid’s Play Zone.
I hope to see you there. I anticipate attending to photograph the cars using one of my film camera and one of the films that are part of Joe’s Film Box. (Please check out Friday’s post to see how the last car show’s film shoot went. Hint: Not so good.) If you see me at the Castle Rock show, please come up and say Hi!
Tip #2: It’s a trend: Many DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have dual memory card slots that let you capture RAW files on one memory card and JPEG image files on the other. T
My Panasonic Lumix G9 has twin card slots and the Nikon D780 I tested for Shutterbug has twin slots; you can read my review of it here. ) All of which means that you can put all of your color RAW files on one card and the monochrome files on the other. Give it a try.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat Joe to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($3.50), click here.
Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photograph that’s available from Amazon for $21.50 with used copies starting around five bucks, a bargain for one of my favorite books. For some reason—not Barry or me— the Kindle price is really high.