Wedding photo

[Robert444]

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I am planning to take candid photos at my nephews wedding with the end result being a collection of black and white shots. My question is should I set the M8 on black and white and shoot jpgs or shoot in raw and use NIK Silver Efex Pro to transition to black and white. Appreciate advice.

[stunsworth]

I'd shoot raw and convert. More flexibility, and better files.

[trs]

Or shoot DNG+JPG(B&W). It will be somewhat slow write to card though.

[chris_livsey]

Shoot RAW and convert- just my opinion.

But what do you normally do ? Have you suddenly got a desire to shoot B+W for this wedding ? Do some test shots forthwith and try both approaches, see what suits you best.

If you want inspiration try this Pro (although he uses a 5DII at the moment he used Leica M in his film days) who has a "reportage" wedding style.

 

Wedding portfolio - Jeff Ascough's Blog

[hdrmd]

I agree, completely: shoot raw and convert. There many ways to convert to B&W, but the Silver Efex Pro is excellent. Good luck. DR

[egibaud]

Raw and convert. For me don't even bother for dual RAW + Jpg, Raw only.

[scaryink]

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I find the jpeg for preview is quite helpful when shooting black and white. I

[mat_mcdermott]

I don't shoot B&W too often, but when I do I find the B&W preview very helpful. But definitely do the conversions from RAW.

[bybrett]

Shoot DNG up to 640 beyond that shoot JPG.

[Jamie Roberts]

Shoot RAW and convert

[Nicoleica]

If you don't use the camera like an AK47, shoot DNG & JPG, and get the best of both worlds.

[Robert444]

Thanks for the advice - looks like RAW is the way to go. If the lighting is poor I may try jpg as suggested. I appreciated the link to Jeff Ascough's blog - that is the style I would like to achieve.

[Jamie Roberts]

Thanks for the advice - looks like RAW is the way to go. If the lighting is poor I may try jpg as suggested. I appreciated the link to Jeff Ascough's blog - that is the style I would like to achieve.

 

Wouldn't we all Jeff is one of the very best.

 

One correction: if you have fabulous light and you're sure of your exposure, go ahead and shoot JPEG.

 

If the lighting is poor, be sure to shoot RAW--especially if its mixed light poor or you want to do some monochrome channel mixing later.

 

BTW2, if you want to achieve the kind of BW tonality Jeff Ascough does, you should seriously consider using his Photoshop actions for BW instead of the Nik stuff. While I've used both, Jeff's are faster and, to tell the truth, closer to film tonality than 99% of the various settings you can make with Nik (not that Nik doesn't deliver good results--it does. There's more than one way to skin that BW cat though).

 

http://jeffascough.typepad.com/ascough_silver_actions/