Post Processing Monochrome images. What is your process to get your "looks"?

[ramarren]

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On 3/1/2023 at 12:56 PM, shanefking said:

I’d love to see some examples of what that green filter does, if you don’t mind sharing

22 hours ago, Cayenne said:

Thank you!!  Very interesting.

I've not tried green filters yet.  Briefly...what situations when you are shooting, do you find Green filters to be the most appropriate?

I took an afternoon walk with the M10-M fitted with Color-Skopar 21mm f/4 II and green filter yesterday. Here's a little video set of seven preview exposures from the walk. 

enjoy! G

[colint544]

Jeff Ascough shoots with a mk1 M Monochrom, and he posts helpful videos such as this on YouTube, showing how he processes his files. If you don't know him, he's well worth a look.

[colint544]

Sorry, I meant to post this one 

[shanefking]

Phil Penman shares his expertise in this session recorded for Capture One

 

https://youtu.be/VD-Tugz_CSo

 

[ramarren]

2 hours ago, colint544 said:

Sorry, I meant to post this one 

Thanks. That's a nice short video and hits most of the major things. In some cases, Jeff Ascough uses a couple of different LR tools to achieve his rendering intents compared to how I achieve the same things, which is always interesting to see... it leads me to experiment a little and try some different methodologies.

G

Edited March 5, 2023 by ramarren

[ramarren]

On 3/3/2023 at 10:55 AM, ramarren said:

If you look carefully at the Color Checker color image and compare it against the none, orange, and green filter versions in B&W, I think you can see (fairly easily) that the green filter tends to give more different grayscale values over the range of colors with none or orange filter, and that the orange filter tends to produce fewer grayscale values compared to none or green filter. This indicates that use of an orange filter will, overall, tend to make a scene more contrasty with fewer tonal steps, and a green filter will tend to make a scene a bit less contrasty with more tonal steps. No filter fits somewhere in the middle. 

A lot depends on the type of light you're shooting in, the spectral distribution of colors in the scene you're shooting, and what you deem to be important in that scene. Sunlight has the broadest color spectrum, and a clear sky, sunny day tends to be very contrasty in and of itself - the green filter will tend to broaden the number of gray tones and give you more different tones to work with effectively lowering perceptual contrast, where an orange filter will tend to do the opposite. And then there's subject matter ... if you're shooting light-skinned people mostly, the green filter will reveal skin imperfections that an orange filter will mask, the green is better when shooting darker-skinned people as it reveals more tonal variation in the skin against a typical scene's average exposure. When shooting foliage and flowers, again the green will tend to differentiate greens, and the orange will push all the greens down a notch making them more similar.

Artificial lighting (typically tungsten bulbs, fluorescents, and LEDs these days) don't produce the continuous spectrum of light that the Sun produces. Tungsten tends to be lower temperature (more shifted to the red end of the spectrum) and the other light sources are more spikey, without the smooth continuous spectrum of either tungsten light or sunlight. So with artificial lighting you have to think about that along with the fact that any of these filters is going to cost you 1-2 stops of light as well, so in many cases it's better to just leave the filter off and use a higher shutter speed for less camera motion possibilities. 

The best way to figure it all out is to keep the simple rule in your head: "Things the same color as the filter will tend to be lighter, things the complement color of the filter will tend to darken." And then go out and experiment ... a lot! At least in the age of digital photography you can experiment ad nauseam at no cost and with instant feedback compared to film photography.  

When I go on my neighborhood walks, I tend to fit a green filter most of the time, if the lens takes filters and it's not too dark out. 

I was thinking about the statement that how the M10-M images the Color Checker being "fairly easily" seen from the images of the color checker and came to the conclusion is that it's not easy to see at all due to the layout of the color swatches ... my eye gets confused as to what I'm seeing where. Someone suggested that maybe the swatches should be in spectrum order ... I tried ordering them that way and that didn't really help. And then I got the bright idea that if I ordered the swatches by the grayscale intensity that the M10-M produced without a filter, and then plotted that along with the lines for both the orange filter and the green filter, the effects of orange and green filtration would be much more easily understood. 

So here's the result:

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Leica M10-M Grayscale Translation of the Xrite Color Checker

The full size image is the size of my Apple ThunderBolt Display 27" and can be obtained by downloading it from Flickr. 

Let me know what you think.

G

{If you have trouble viewing the full resolution image from Flickr.com, just drop me a note and I'll email it to you.}

Edited March 8, 2023 by ramarren

[shanefking]

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On 3/8/2023 at 2:46 PM, ramarren said:

 

So here's the result:

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Leica M10-M Grayscale Translation of the Xrite Color Checker

The full size image is the size of my Apple ThunderBolt Display 27" and can be obtained by downloading it from Flickr. 

Let me know what you think.

G

{If you have trouble viewing the full resolution image from Flickr.com, just drop me a note and I'll email it to you.}

Awesome work G, this is a great way to clearly illustrate a sometimes tricky concept.  I appreciate your explanation and sharing your knowledge about different lighting.

[ramarren]

A number of folks emailed me and asked if I knew what other filters did with Color Checker colors when using an M10-M. So I expanded my tests to a full set of five B&W filters ... Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, and Blue (80A). These two compilation images are approximately the size of my 27" display, it's probably best to download them and view them displayed locally for best readability. 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

 

Enjoy! G

 

[oworbs]

Great Thread, thanks guys!!!

 

[japo]

Hi,

since 2/2020 i only use my m10m usually with an apo50 or a 28lux.
95% of images taken at -1EV
100% without filter
100% post process in LRclassic, works phenomenally well and simply with masking
1% post process in PS and SilverEP but the files become massive and the resultbonus is not worth the effort for me. 

if you want to see an image, have a look at https://japocladek.myportfolio.com - all street and portraits are from the m10m.
The most important thing, however, is how do you want your images to look

succes and enjoy