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Posts Tagged ‘Blackandwhite’

The Weekly Photography Challenge – BlackAndWhite

08 May

The post The Weekly Photography Challenge – BlackAndWhite appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Sime.

Last week I ruffled some proverbial feathers and made sure to mention that we want you to go out and make a NEW photo for this challenge, which is kinda the point of a ‘challenge‘ as there really isn’t a lot that’s challenging about dipping into your Lightroom catalogue and pulling out a photograph from 1984, is there?

This week your challenge theme is #dPSBlackAndWhite (Or, mostly B&W)

Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach

Ideally, being digital photography SCHOOL we want you all to push yourselves with ‘easy’ themes that you have to spend a little time THINKING about how to make an awesome image! THat’s the goal, but, we get it – some people can’t, and so that’s why it’s not a ‘Rule’ it’s more of a guideline. So, that little gem of information out of the way, let’s get on with this week’s challenge which is B&W or, more commonly ‘Black and White’ which we haven’t done for a good while and I thought it might be good to see how you’ve progressed!

B&W Portraits | Still Life | Street | Headshots | …but HOW? click here for a post that might help.

Battersea Power Station
This is Battersea Calling

Because I just had a little mini-rant about making this a new photograph and so on, I popped the camera on the tripod and photographed my guitars – they’ve made their share of grunge-type noises, so I opted for a messy gritty B&W conversion in Lightroom. You can use many different was to convert your photograph to B&W if you shoot it colour in raw, or just use the B&W filters (if your camera has them) options in your camera – most cameras have a ‘creative’ set of filters including B&W.

One thing I have always loved in a B&W image is higher contrast (as is evident) the photo of Battersea Power station and the tree (I like trees, huh) at Omaha Beach are older, depicting my love for gritty, contrasty B&W through the years, and the one below was taken about an hour ago, here in my office. ANyways, enough about me, let’s see what YOU have for B&W theme challenge this week. (Read on below for instructions on how to post)

Black & White Guitars
Washburn, Washburn, Music Man, Washburn

Great! How do I upload my photos?

Upload your photo into the comments field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section below this post) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see. Or, if you’d prefer, upload them to your favourite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them.

Weekly Photography Challenge – Looking Up

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

You can also share your images in the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.

The post The Weekly Photography Challenge – BlackAndWhite appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Sime.


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Kosmo Foto launches Mono 120 black-and-white film, now available for pre-order

16 Feb

Kosmo Foto has launched pre-orders for its Mono film in 120 format, adding the new product alongside the 35mm version launched in 2017. According to the company, the first batch of Mono 120 has entered production and will be sold exclusively through the Kosmo Foto shop. Future batches of the film will be available through Kosmo’s retailers and distributors, as well.

In its announcement today, the company explained:

Mono has proven to be really popular with film photographers – it’s now stocked in photography shops all over the world, and been bought by photographers from Greenland to Greece and Costa Rica to the Czech Republic.

Not everyone, however, shoots 35mm film. The resurgence that film has enjoyed over the last few years has also seen many people shooting on medium format cameras from humble Holgas through to Hasselblads.

So Kosmo Foto is very pleased to be able to say that Kosmo Foto Mono 120 is now available to pre-order.

According to Kosmo Foto, Mono features a traditional black-and-white chemistry that can be developed using Tetanal, Rodinal, Perceptol, and similar formulations, but it can’t be developed by mini-labs with only C41 processing. Mono 120 is suitable for use in a variety of shooting conditions, including both sunny and overcast environments.

Kosmo Foto requires pre-order customers to purchase at least three, but no more than 10, rolls of Mono 120 when ordering. Each roll costs £4.50 / $ 5.80 and is available now through the Kosmo Foto store; the company expects its first batch to be ready for shipment in May.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Adobe Scribbler uses AI to colorize black-and-white portraits and sketches

25 Oct

At the Adobe MAX 2017 conference last week, the engineers at Adobe Research showed off a deep learning system called Project Scribbler that can transform a line sketch or black-and-white portrait into a fully colorized and realistic image. The technology utilizes Adobe Sensei artificial intelligence technology to generate a realistic color image based on a partially-colored sketch created by the user.

As with all of their “Sneaks” at Adobe MAX, Adobe describes this as an early technology, teasing that it “may or may not” become a future product or feature in an existing product like Photoshop.

In a description posted on the Adobe Research website, researchers explain that existing deep convolutional networks are able to generate realistic images, but that users have little control over what the final images look like. This makes the technology “of limited utility,” according to the researchers, a reality not shared by their Scribbler network.

Unlike the aforementioned deep convolutional networks, Scribbler gives users a great deal of control over the final image it generates. This is made possible by feeding Scribbler a sketch where the lines serve as boundaries for the final image. As well, users are able to control how Scribbler colorizes the image by applying “sparse color strokes” to the sketch. These color strokes serve as a guideline so that Scribbler knows what colors to use for each part of the sketch.

Scribbler is capable of realistically coloring sketches and black-and-white photos without the aid of user-created color strokes, though, as demonstrated by Adobe researcher Jingwan Lu in the video above.

Scribbler was also demonstrated as capable of realistically applying existing textures to a sketch. To do this, the user places a texture over the part of the sketch where the desired texture should be applied. And, of course, Scribbler can apply more than one texture to different parts of the same sketch.

A product or feature based on Project Scribbler could prove useful in a variety of ways. Photographers, for example, could use this technology to rapidly colorize a black-and-white photo. Similarly, an artist could use Scribbler to flesh out a quick sketch of a planned art piece, enabling the artist or their client to see a representation of the final artwork before time is invested in creating it.

The full paper detailing the Scribbler colorizing technology is available here, the paper about Scribbler’s texture control technology is available here, and, of course, you should definitely check out the demo at the top.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Film reversal: How to turn a black-and-white negative into a direct positive

30 Aug

If you need a fun film photography experiment to try out this week/weekend, how about giving black-and-white film reversal a shot? The folks at Branco Ottico decided to give this process a shot—turning multiple black-and-white negatives into rich, direct positive transparencies… just because.

Branco Ottico’s Davide Rossi detailed the whole process in a dual-language blog post and the video above. But if your first question is less “how” and more “why,” he covers that as well:

Why reverse a black and white film to get a positive one?

Because it is the way to create a direct positve original by the extraordinary richness of detail, because it is unique and made alive by light, because you can make a backlight reveal the shape of an object.

It’s really a very detailed photograph, with fascinating nuances and deep densities, they take your eyes wondering marvelous.

Rossi promises that these direct positive transparencies look “alive” in a way that an inverted scan on a computer screen simply can’t. “This is what I see when I shed my eyes in front of a slide created by a big 20x25cm camera,” he writes. “Faces that live their own light with such a detailed skin roughness to make you smile because it does not even look alive with the your own eyes.”

Rossi was kind enough to share some behind the scenes and final images with us. Check them out for yourself in the galleries below:

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Mind you, the process is no walk in the park. Even if you purchase a dedicated black-and-white film reversal kit online, each different film requires a different approach—then again, isn’t that what makes this an experiment worthy of the name?

For Rossi, it took 4 days of trial and error to figure out an easy-to-reproduce three-step process that he will soon publish as a followup to this video.

If you want to give the experiment a shot for yourself, check out the video and blog post for yourself, stock your homebrew darkroom, and give it a go this weekend. If you want a bit more guidance, keep an eye on the Branco Ottico site for a detailed breakdown of Rossi’s three-step process.

All photos by Davide Rossi/Branco Ottico and used with permission.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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FOQUS Type-D 200 is a new 35mm black-and-white film from Russia

30 Aug

The team behind Russian company FOQUS has launched FOQUS 200, a new 35mm panchromatic black-and-white film described as having a fine grain, strong contrast, and
“pretty good tone range.” The film’s release was made possible by photography enthusiasts in Moscow, according to FOQUS, though it will ship anywhere with orders already available online.

FOQUS explains that Type-D is made entirely in Russia, and is not a repackaged product from Europe. In a blog post, the team explained that photographers may occasionally experience the presence of small ‘dots’ on their developed prints, something they don’t consider a big problem but hope to address in time. They also explain that Type-D isn’t very forgiving, and so photographers should “know what [they’re] doing” when they use it.

If you do know what you’re doing, you can get results like this:

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Because the film is entirely produced within Russia, the price is low for international buyers: at only 230 rubles / $ 4 USD / 3.30 Euro / 3 GBP per roll. Probably as a result, the FOQUS website currently lists the film as out of stock.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Shooting 101MP black-and-white photos with the Phase One XF IQ3 Achromatic

20 Aug

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Phase One recently sent award-winning portrait photographer Rick Wenner on a dream assignment. Equipped with the XF IQ3 Achromatic—the world’s only 101MP black-and-white medium format digital back—he was sent to Wildwood, NJ to shoot an odd event called the Race of the Gentlemen.

The annual drag racing event features pre-war era hot rods and motorcycles, speeding across the beach. It’s the ideal event to shoot in black-and-white, and when you’re shooting with the only 101MP digital back out there… well, all the better.

But why black and white only? Wenner explained in an interview with Phase One:

“Black and white photography is a great approach to focus completely on the detail and art of these beautiful machines. […] You aren’t distracted by a bright blue sky or a yellow-green paint job on a hot rod. You are not distracted by the colorful tattoos or the rust and patina of an old delivery truck. Your eye is only looking at what I want the viewers to see in my photos – detail, texture, facial expressions, style, shapes, and action.”

As for the camera itself, it was… hefty… as you might well assume. In addition to the weight of the XF IQ3 Achromatic, Wenner was using the Schneider Kreuznach 40-80mm LS f/4.0-5.6 and Schneider Kreuznach 75-150mm LS f/4.0-5.6 Blue Ring lenses, neither of which are exactly light.

Speaking with DPReview over email, though, Wenner tells us the extra weight was totally worth it once he got a look at the files:

The camera was heavier than what I’m used to with those zoom lenses but still manageable throughout the day. The files are ENORMOUS, as expected. The .IIQ (raw) files are on average about 150-175 MB. I loved working with the files because of the insane amount of detail captured and how much information can be recovered in highlights and shadows.

Check out the full set of photos from the TROG event up top. And if you want to see more of Wenner’s work, visit his website, check out his blog, or give him a follow on Instagram.

All photos by Rick Wenner and used with permission.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Video: tips for black-and-white processing in Lightroom

10 Jun
This tutorial provides useful advice for getting the most out of Lightroom when it comes to converting images to grayscale and making edits. The narrator notes that it is OK to push sliders way more than you might be use to when editing color images, which is definitely important to remember! He also offers quality advice on using the color sliders to improve the tonality of b/w images.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Hybrid Graffiti: Black-and-White Stencils Bring Colorful Tags to Life

06 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

stencil-tags

Nearly photo-realistic figures stenciled in place make bright surrounding tags all the more vibrant in this series of street art juxtapositions by artist Martin Whatson of Norway.

graffiti-revealed-mural

graffiti-mural-context

The characters, generally rendered in black and white, are sized and scaled like residents and passers by in the built environment. The tags, rich and overlapping, look more like what most people would call “graffiti.” The anti-artist Gray Ghost comes to mind, famous for painting over the works of other artists, like Banksy.

graffiti-cleanup

graffiti-in-situ

 

On their own, each component is somewhat predictable, but in their interactions these works come to life. The characters look through windows surrounded by color, or sweep up street graffiti, or pull back walls to reveal it. The tags, in turn, add light and life to the scenes, points of color in a drab and dreary city.

graffiti-dander

graffiti-cyclist

graffiti-sailboat

Much of his work breaks this format as well, but generally still finds itself at the interaction of urban spaces and imaginary worlds. Below, a figure painting clouds on the wall gives depth and dimension on both fronts: the clouds seem to go back and the painter appears to stand out.

graffiti-clouds

graffiti-cover

graffiti-window

More about the artist and his approach: “Martin has a continuous urge to search for beauty in what is commonly dismissed as ugly, out of style or simply left behind. He looks for inspirations in people, city landscapes, old buildings, graffiti, posters and decaying walls. This interest for decay has helped develop his style, motives and composition and he enjoys creating either unity or conflict between materials, backgrounds, motives and human intervention” (via Colossal).

Banksy Tags Manhattan: Fresh New Graffiti Live from NYC

Making his way through the boroughs of New York, the infamous but mysterious interventionist Banksy is broadcasting new stencils, installations and mixed media work all month as a …

Tag Clouds & More: Geek Street Artist Remakes Messy Graffiti

To the uninitiated, used to seeing it but not to reading it, graffiti scrawl can seem illegible. In a play on both tagging and technology, this artist turns traditional tags into computer-style …

Colorful Art Writers: 10 of the Best Graffiti Artists

Humans have been expressing themselves by scrawling on walls since the earliest people lived in caves. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that we started taking our messages to the walls, trains and …

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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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Nine black-and-white photo apps to elevate your monochrome game

05 Jun

Black-and-white photo apps to elevate your monochrome game

Not so long ago, novice photographers began learning their craft with black and white film. While many eventually mixed color into their portfolios, others eschewed hues entirely, opting for the smoothness of subtle monochrome tones.

Then came the digital revolution where all native output was in color by default, and anyone who pined for black-and-white had to figure out how to make it look real. Today, a multitude of black and white shooting, editing and conversion apps offer iOS and Android shooters many monochrome styles — from specific film analogs and grains to authentic borders, tints and vignettes, most with the ability to export and share via social media.

While any stock camera app will happily shoot monochrome images, these apps go further with filter options and interfaces tailored to black-and-white shooting. We ransacked the pile to uncover nine worth downloading.

Black-and-white photo apps to elevate your monochrome game

Dramatic Black & White
$ 1.99 | iOS | Android

JixiPix wasn’t kidding when it made ‘drama’ the central focus of its app and even its name. Whether you shoot with Dramatic Black and White’s built-in camera or pull a color image from your Camera Roll, the app’s highly configurable interface, flexible presets and editing tools set it apart.

Images open in black and white with an adjustable ellipse spotlight that lets you zero in on the subject. From there, you can crop (rectangle or square) or adjust tone, sharpness, brightness or contrast. Individual red, green, and blue filters give images definition, while at the same time you can mix in grain or apply a color tint. Multiple levels of tweaking are possible but it’s also possible to use the app’s extensive one-click presets (Black & White, Dramatic B&W and Infrared) for a hands-off approach.

In addition to its infinite choices, the app’s performance is outstanding — there’s no waiting for a preview to render as as you experiment with different settings.

Black-and-white photo apps to elevate your monochrome game

Lenka

Free | iOS | Android 

Introduced two years ago, Lenka, designed by photographer Kevin Abosch, sparked renewed interest in the mobile genre. Because it’s exclusively a image capture app, you can’t dig up an older photo from your Camera Roll and apply the Lenka treatment; the app forces you to concentrate on tone and contrast from the outset.

Lenka is minimalist and designed to be smart: It operates in full auto exposure mode, but if you want more control, you can tap the subject onscreen or the MF (manual focus) button on the control panel. Its four slider-based buttons for exposure, contrast, tint and focus toggle on and off. You can also summon extra illumination for fill lighting or extreme low light by tapping the light bulb icon for a continuous flood of light. There’s no front facing camera either, so no selfies.

Lenka is fast, easy and fun to use, and its auto setting works well enough to give you some great shots without much effort. 

Black-and-white photo apps to elevate your monochrome game

BlackCam
$ 1.99 | iOS | Android

BlackCam, XnView’s capture and editing app, offers more than two dozen adjustable presets to impart a wide assortment of monochrome looks to your existing pictures – or you can shoot using live preview. Despite the number of adjustments available: Classic, Vintage, Light, Shadow, Dark, High Contrast and more, the app is easy to use. Classic editing tools let you adjust brightness, contrast, exposure, vignette and simulated film grain. Colored lens and professional conversion filters show up on screen. You can easily get by with the free version, which includes a large assortment of filters, but to get rid of distracting ads and unlock additional presets like Hard boiled, Vintage Deep and Platinum, you’ll have to upgrade.

Black-and-white photo apps to elevate your monochrome game

Photolab Black
Free | Android 

Photolab Black, an Android-only photo capture and editor from Sand 5 Apps mixes retro-style black and white analog photo and Polaroid film effects with monochromatic file emulation filters to give new photos an old-time look. If you’re in the mood for grain, vintage, grunge and textures, feel free to go crazy with stylized filters like Ilford, Lomography, Pan F, Provia 100F and more. The app also provides a full set of classic editing tools like color balance, crop, rotate, and straighten or the ability to adjust brightness, contrast, color temperature, saturation, exposure, vignette, sharpen and blur with a swipe. The app is free, but to unlock certain modules like frames, you have to invite a friend on Google Plus or Facebook.

Black-and-white photo apps to elevate your monochrome game

Hueless
$ 1.99 | iOS

Hueless, a popular black and white photo app for iOS, is another capture-only (not editing) app from Curious Satellite. Think of Hueless as a film camera with black-and-white stock and use it when you want to avoid post processing. The main (H) icon lets you choose TIFF or JPEG format and can hide the menu to maximize your concentration on composition: A simple screen tap records the image. If you want to shoot fast without setup, the app lets you record up to four presets. Advanced touches include a live exposure compensation slider, live contrast adjustment slider and adjustable photo filters in blue, green, yellow, orange and red, which give definition to grayscale images. The app’s interface feels natural, though if you commit to using all controls in the moment, it may seem overwhelming. Hueless can save your photos to the Camera Roll or a special Hueless album. 

Black-and-white photo apps to elevate your monochrome game

BLACK
$ 0.99 | iOS 

BLACK puts the focus on retro film emulations. Ten distinctive film looks let you preview via swipe: Experiment with stocks like Tura P400, Paterson Acupan 800, Fujifilm FP-3000B and others. Just browse through each filter to find the one that best suits your image. Familiar tools like Curves, Fade and Vignette are also available. Curves puts tone and contrast at your disposal with a dynamic preview and histogram. Vignette’s slider adjustments let you play with contrast and shadow around the subject. Fade’s filmic effect adjusts for shadows. A full preview is available in Collection mode, as you tilt your iPhone 90 degrees. BLACK is a stylish and elegant monochrome rendition that offers some unique throwback effects. 

Black-and-white photo apps to elevate your monochrome game

Simply B&W
Free | iOS 

Fotosyn’s Simply B&W offers a variety of choices for both shooting and editing. Select from an assortment of familiar films such as T-Max, HP5, Tri-X, XP2, Delta, SFX-IR and Vintage, and you can leave it at that. If you’re into more tweaking, sliders let you control brightness, contrast and grain, while vignettes and frames add a finishing touch. The real treat with this app lies in its selection of filters (Red, Green, Polarizer, IR Filter) that emulate analog filters for black and white photography. A unique pro feature is the app’s integration with Adobe Creative Cloud, which lets you access your account directly from the app and work on your image on your phone.

Black-and-white photo apps to elevate your monochrome game

Ansel
$ 0.99 | iOS 

Not a single photographer – pro or amateur – doesn’t know the name Ansel, practically synonymous with monochrome shooting today. When launched, Ansel even reads the Camera Roll in black and white, where you can immediately preview the conversion of any of your color images. Once a photo is opened in Ansel, the app provides more than a dozen controls to aid in the transition. A minimal number of presets offer a starting point, but it’s just as easy to dive right into the sliders to alter tone, contrast, exposure, shadows and highlights. Add a gradient or vignette while using the Mix filter and choose any color at all as a filter. If you’re unhappy with the result, you can either reset changes or revert to the original photo. While you can use the app in landscape mode, the icons don’t flip to accommodate the new position, but they’re big enough to easily read.

Black-and-white photo apps to elevate your monochrome game

Argentum Camera
Free | iOS

A newcomer to the scene, Argentum Camera has an unusual take on black and white photography. The filters in Argentum Camera for iPhone are not names for films, but rather iconic photographers. Specifically, this app lets you shoot in styles inspired by Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn, Garry Winogrand, Yousuf Karsh and Dorothea Lange, which you view on screen while you focus and compose your shot.

The camera interface was built for larger iPhones. Additional options include a speed shooting mode for one-tap shots and Double Exposure to superimpose two images in a single photo. The app does not support the front facing camera – so no selfies. As you store your original unprocessed photos in your Camera Roll, a narrow line in the bottom indicates how much free space you have left. You can even take shots remotely via Apple Watch. The app is free with the Ansel Adams filter and a $ 2.99 in-app purchase buys you all five additional filters.

Black-and-white photo apps to elevate your monochrome game

While all nine of our picks offer polished results and an original approach, there are a couple of standouts.

Best free option

For the easiest shooting experience and the most enticing results, Lenka is our overall favorite among the free apps. There’s practically no setup, but rather a simple point and shoot interface that provides just enough control to get great results.

Best paid option

On the paid side, Dramatic Black and White simply hits it out of the ballpark with its flexible, easy-to-use shooting and editing controls, sizable number of presets and outstanding performance.

The apps above are just a small sample of the mobile black and white apps out there. Do you have a favorite that was not mentioned? Please share it in the comments.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Black-and-White Photography Tips for Beginners

22 Jan

There are some photographers who like to click images and convert them into black-and-white photos in the post-production phase. There’s nothing wrong with this procedure; it’s just that it is time consuming. So, instead of converting the photos into black and white later, wouldn’t it be better to shoot photos in black and white in the first place? In today’s Continue Reading

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