Realistic Monochrome Pictures from a Colour Shot

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Mach 109

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Here is something that I have wondered and I am sure that there are people on this forum that will know the answer:

The pictures that I have seen taken on monochrome film mostly show reds as a dark shade and greens as a lighter shade. I believe that monochrome films used to be "sensitive" to parts of the colour spectrum more than others, that makes sense to me. I recently saw a film made recently on one of the streaming services that was attempting to re-create a Sixties monochrome film look and it just looked so wrong and unconvincing! I suspect that the combining of the relevant red / green / blue components of the obviously original colour picture was not set up well - that would explain it at least to some degree. Obviously lighting / contrast would be other settings, but I suspect the "colour combining" was at fault on this occasion, personally.

What would be the expected settings of such an exercise to make a modern colour picture look as if it had been shot on monochrome film? Do cameras offer that degree of subtlety when they offer a monochrome setting?
 
This may be of help...

www.gimp.org

GIMP - Converting Color Images to B&W

Text and images Copyright (C) 2002 Eric R. Jeschke and may not be used without permission of the author. Intention¶ In this tutorial I’ll show you some different ways to convert color RGB images to B&W: the “standard” grayscale conversion operation. the desaturate operation. decomposing to RGB and …
www.gimp.org www.gimp.org

It's based on GIMP but the basics apply to most editors.
 
As above silver fx is the only black and white editor I use. Providing you import a colour photo it recreates the way different films “see” colour. Plus you can simulate the effect of using different coloured lens filters.
 
Mach 109 said:
Here is something that I have wondered and I am sure that there are people on this forum that will know the answer:

The pictures that I have seen taken on monochrome film mostly show reds as a dark shade and greens as a lighter shade. I believe that monochrome films used to be "sensitive" to parts of the colour spectrum more than others, that makes sense to me. I recently saw a film made recently on one of the streaming services that was attempting to re-create a Sixties monochrome film look and it just looked so wrong and unconvincing! I suspect that the combining of the relevant red / green / blue components of the obviously original colour picture was not set up well - that would explain it at least to some degree. Obviously lighting / contrast would be other settings, but I suspect the "colour combining" was at fault on this occasion, personally.

What would be the expected settings of such an exercise to make a modern colour picture look as if it had been shot on monochrome film? Do cameras offer that degree of subtlety when they offer a monochrome setting?
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Most people, I would think, aren't relying on a camera monochrome setting for their black and white photographs, but are taking full colour RAW images, which are then processed as black and white.

Some will use specialist black and white processing software, such as Nik Silver Effex Pro (as others have mentioned) but equally, many people will just use the black and white processing tools found in generalist tools such as Lightroom, Capture One, Photoshop or Affinity Photo. There are also a few cameras that have monochrome sensors (Leica, Pentax and Phase One)

However, colour digital cameras can easily produce excellent black and white results, regardless of whether they "exactly" emulate the results from film.

The extent to which digital can emulate film is subject to recurring debate, and the "film" look covers a wide range of characteristics, not just dependent on the type of film, but also on how it was developed and printed. And that's before you look at manipulating tonal relationships through the use of colour filters at the time of exposure.

Although, not all will agree, the lack of subtlety often associated with digital, has more to do with how the digital file has been processed than any inherent lack of subtlety with the sensor. The settings for black and white will depend on the software being used, and how you want your black and white image to look.
 
I forgot to add theres a few really good videos on YouTube showing BW conversions in LR and PS. One I saw used some very complicate ajustment to fine tune the BW. Sadly I cant remember the title or creator. I think it was a shot of the inside of a church?
 
myotis said:
Most people, I would think, aren't relying on a camera monochrome setting for their black and white photographs, but are taking full colour RAW images, which are then processed as black and white.

Some will use specialist black and white processing software, such as Nik Silver Effex Pro (as others have mentioned) but equally, many people will just use the black and white processing tools found in generalist tools such as Lightroom, Capture One, Photoshop or Affinity Photo. There are also a few cameras that have monochrome sensors (Leica, Pentax and Phase One)

However, colour digital cameras can easily produce excellent black and white results, regardless of whether they "exactly" emulate the results from film.

The extent to which digital can emulate film is subject to recurring debate, and the "film" look covers a wide range of characteristics, not just dependent on the type of film, but also on how it was developed and printed. And that's before you look at manipulating tonal relationships through the use of colour filters at the time of exposure.

Although, not all will agree, the lack of subtlety often associated with digital, has more to do with how the digital file has been processed than any inherent lack of subtlety with the sensor. The settings for black and white will depend on the software being used, and how you want your black and white image to look.
Click to expand...
I’ve found the “film look” has a lot to do with the lens and the sharpness more than anything. Unless I really really need it I turn off all sharpening and add a very small amount of film grain. Not to make it look like film as such but I think it takes away the harsh edge that digital can have.
I’ve got a couple of older lenses but also a 7artisans 18mm pancake lens. The 18mm pancake looks a lot like an old disposable point and shoot
 
In my view the contents of the image will determine how well the software converts it to black and white rather than the actual settings. My Nikon's have a B&W setting which I seldom use as I convert from colour if the image merits it.

I use Capture one and a typical starting point will be as follows.

Show image B&W
Sharpeness up
Clarity down
Reset black point in levels
Reset white point
shove midtones lighter or darker depending on image
add granularity to preference
add contrast to taste

This will usually give a good start point before using presets, filters or individual colour channels etc

I hope I am answering the right question.
 
Nebular89 said:
I’ve found the “film look” has a lot to do with the lens and the sharpness more than anything. Unless I really really need it I turn off all sharpening and add a very small amount of film grain. Not to make it look like film as such but I think it takes away the harsh edge that digital can have.
I’ve got a couple of older lenses but also a 7artisans 18mm pancake lens. The 18mm pancake looks a lot like an old disposable point and shoot
Click to expand...
I think it's a more to do with contrast, and tonality for me, rather than sharpness, but I am more used to medium format and large format black and white film than 35mm., and they were always noticeably sharper than 35mm, as well as having better tonal gradation.

I don't try to emulate film, but being so used to images from film, I feel my processing (at least for landscape) will inevitably err towards a film vibe. But the final feel of a black and white print (and I think it has to be a print) is made up of multiple components.

One of the problems for me with the "film" look is that there are multiple film looks, some grainy, some grainless, some sharp, some soft and some contrasty and some not so contrasty.
 
myotis said:
I think it's a more to do with contrast, and tonality for me, rather than sharpness, but I am more used to medium format and large format black and white film than 35mm., and they were always noticeably sharper than 35mm, as well as having better tonal gradation.

I don't try to emulate film, but being so used to images from film, I feel my processing (at least for landscape) will inevitably err towards a film vibe. But the final feel of a black and white print (and I think it has to be a print) is made up of multiple components.

One of the problems for me with the "film" look is that there are multiple film looks, some grainy, some grainless, some sharp, some soft and some contrasty and some not so contrasty.
Click to expand...
That’s probably a lot of it. My favourite film was Fp4 in 6x6 pushed to 250 in rodinal. I’ve basically got it with silver fx pro but there’s always something missing.
 
Nebular89 said:
That’s probably a lot of it. My favourite film was Fp4 in 6x6 pushed to 250 in rodinal. I’ve basically got it with silver fx pro but there’s always something missing.
Click to expand...
The big thing about black and white film, is that you are never evaluating just the film and developer, but the film and developer PLUS the paper and developer.

A lot of my time, and money, in the film days was spent on evaluating papers.
 
Mach 109 said:
The pictures that I have seen taken on monochrome film mostly show reds as a dark shade and greens as a lighter shade. I believe that monochrome films used to be "sensitive" to parts of the colour spectrum more than others, that makes sense to me. I recently saw a film made recently on one of the streaming services that was attempting to re-create a Sixties monochrome film look and it just looked so wrong and unconvincing! I suspect that the combining of the relevant red / green / blue components of the obviously original colour picture was not set up well - that would explain it at least to some degree.
Click to expand...

Monochrome films may have variable sensitivity to different colours, and older films were not panchromatic like modern emulsions. The film you describe may have been trying to recreate the older style blue sensitivity that can looks little odd to modern eyes, although in that case reds should have appeared darker in the manner you described.

In general it's good to control what colours appear darker lighter using filters (a yellow filter will darken skies, brighten leaves and grass etc. this can be applied in post processing to mono conversions of colour images to make them more 'realistic'.
 
The best piece of software I found for this was Truegrain2. I think it was a one man band developer who looked at the spectral sensitivity of monochrome film and applied it to digital images. Grain was overlaid onto the image and the grain was actual scanned grain from that particular emulsion. For bonus points he allowed manipulation in the app to emulate any film of choice as long as they produced a data sheet with the spectral sensitivity for you to copy. You'd be stuck with the scanned grain though.

For me, it knocked any "preset pack" out of the park in terms of emulating black & white film - especially HP5 & Tri-X. Grain was controllable, so you could apply a "120" style grain which was "smaller" (because of the larger negative) vs 35mm grain which was more pronounced. I wrote a review some time ago about it here (https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/truegrain2-thoughts.745156/).

I've also been experimenting with my Panasonic S9 and building LUTs which would do a similar job for the tone rendering, but unfortunately not the grain. After a lot of faffing around, it's just easier to shoot film. Today anyway :)
 
Harlequin565 said:
The best piece of software I found for this was Truegrain2. I think it was a one man band developer who looked at the spectral sensitivity of monochrome film and applied it to digital images. Grain was overlaid onto the image and the grain was actual scanned grain from that particular emulsion. For bonus points he allowed manipulation in the app to emulate any film of choice as long as they produced a data sheet with the spectral sensitivity for you to copy. You'd be stuck with the scanned grain though.

For me, it knocked any "preset pack" out of the park in terms of emulating black & white film - especially HP5 & Tri-X. Grain was controllable, so you could apply a "120" style grain which was "smaller" (because of the larger negative) vs 35mm grain which was more pronounced. I wrote a review some time ago about it here (https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/truegrain2-thoughts.745156/).

I've also been experimenting with my Panasonic S9 and building LUTs which would do a similar job for the tone rendering, but unfortunately not the grain. After a lot of faffing around, it's just easier to shoot film. Today anyway :)
Click to expand...
I've not tried it, but Imagenomic Real Grain seems to get good things said about it (given Truegrain 2 is no longer available). Actually, even if I had tried it, I know nothing about these types of programs.

 
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