Black and White Madness

[Guest WPalank]

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OK, so I'm out early this morning shooting in the Presidio National Park, San Francisco with my M8 and I'm staring straight into the sun, my tripod not even extended and fire my first shot with my cable release. Doing previsualization, I had immediately seen this landscape as a B&W. Well, I look at my LED (histo was exactly what I was expecting) and see what appears to be a B&W image. I thought to myself, it must be the lens flare and the fact I was up so early never having gotten my first cup of coffee. I fire off another, still looks B&W.

(You can vistit the posted image here):

http://www.leica-camera-user.com/landscape-travel/15638-miles-go-before-i.html

 

So I check my set button and yes, I'm in DNG mode (I never shoot JPEG). But last night having read some posts on B&W JPEG, I had never seen this menu and did some searching around to find it under "Saturation". I had gotten out of JPEG and re-set to DNG and turned my camera off for the evening.

Well the freaky thing is that the camera wouldn't let me into saturation while I was in DNG, so I had to re-set to JPEG and turn Saturation back to Standard and then get back to DNG mode and the LED was once again showing color.

Once I got home I immediately downloaded the images to see what I had. Freaky thing #2, when I opened the images in the Light Room application, I found that the film strip view gave me B&W's and the Preview and Develop modules showed them as color. Is this normal or just my camera? Once again, is it a fix in 1.10 or something people find to be of use? Cheers!

[timwalker]

I think it's normal. The saturation and sharpening and contrast are all grayed out when you shoot DNG because those things aren't applied in camera with DNG.

 

You may have inadvertently set your camera to give you a JPEG and DNG together without realizing it? I have been experimenting with this and saved it as a User Profile so I could shoot RAW but with the intention of processing black and white... the black and white jpeg allows me to see it that way on the camera's LCD but to have the full RAW file for better conversion to black and white than just the desaturated jpeg. I noticed the first time I processed these that the small previews, even of the DNG files accompanying their companion black and white jpegs, were previewing in black and white as thumbnails. When I opened them in Adobe Camera RAW, though, they were in their full color glory.

 

I hope this makes sense.

 

I have also, in my early days of learning the camera, accidentally activated my user profiles and changed settings without realizing it.

 

I am really new to the M8, though.

[Guest WPalank]

I think it's normal. The saturation and sharpening and contrast are all grayed out when you shoot DNG because those things aren't applied in camera with DNG.

Tim, that I had figured out, thanks though! Also, you can't edit "Color Space" when you are in DNG.

 

You may have inadvertently set your camera to give you a JPEG and DNG together without realizing it?

That's what I thought at first but my menu was set to DNG only! I confirmed this when I got home and had only DNGs on my SD card.

What I had done is got into JPEG > Saturation> Black and White then gotten out of the Saturation mode without switching it back to Standard. Then I selected DNG form the Set Menu and it was somehow locked in.

[robsteve]

When shooting B+W with DNG on the DMR, the DNG files are in colour, just the thumbnails in B&W. They must figure you will set the RAW application to B&W when converting the DNG files.

 

I think it is a good feature since you can always decide to go back to colour after it is shot.

[LJL]

Robert,

Exactly! When I first saw this I thought it was a "bug", but have come to enjoy it more as a "feature". Go figure. If you set the camera to DNG+JPEG B/W, shoot a frame, and then go back to DNG only, the previews will continue to show up as B/W. I think this is fantastic, as you know you have the DNG file in full color, but you get to do your shooting thinking in B/W. To get back to color, you have to go back to DNG + JPEG (no B/W), take a shot and then go back to shooting DNGs again and you will have your previews in color.

 

The one thing I did not check before I sent my camera off was what happens to the zoomed views on the LCD while you were in seeing the previews in B/W? Do they stay in B/W and only use the thumbnail, or do they show up in color, by digging into the DNG file? Anybody care to quickly test that? Thanks.

 

LJ

[BerndReini]

There seems to be a "bug" in the firmware that when you switch back to DNG mode from JPEG, the camera remembers the JPEG settings last used and displays the pictures accordingly for about ten seconds. Then the pictures appear in normal color mode. I love this feature since it allows me to preview a B&W image without having to shoot a simultaneous JPEG.

[carstenw]

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This has been documented in earlier threads. If you switch to DNG+JPG (or just JPG), switch to B&W, and switch back to DNG, then the previews are in B&W. If you review your shots later on, they show up as B&W, but after a few seconds switch to colour.

[j. borger]

THis is a great feauture for a complete B&W workflow ....... my standard settings!

[35mmSummicron]

to further the observations of this "bug/feature" i noticed this:

 

-M8 set to show an RGB histogram in the menu button.

-take photo, then playback

-now click info.

 

while the preview thumnail eventually switches back to colour, notice the histogram does not.

 

the quickest 'fix' is to zoom the image in and zoom back out.

 

not the end of the world, just thought i'd share some info.

 

LOVING this M8!

 

andy