best DSLR for B/W

[rulian]

Hello
I have a pentax ist D which I love, the image quality is good enough for my personal use, and i'm happy with my old pentax k-mount lenses. However, i'm dying to get back into B/W photography, and play around with using filters. Unfortunately, the pentax *ist D does not have a strick b/w setting. It does desaturate images however, it records the images with color information, which completely negates the filters I want to use. and a filtered colored image turned b/w does not have the same effect as a b/w photo taken with color filters.
is there a camera out there that will behave like b/w film when set to strick b/w? or am I better off shooting film and scannign negatives, because I have no room for a dark room in my house.

 

[Sw1tchFX]

If my D70 had a B&W mode, i'd never use it. Digitally, shooting in color and converting through a channel mixer on a computer provides more flexibility. That's how I do it.

I think the Nikon D80 has B&W filters in it's menu's somewhere. I think they're Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow.

 

[Big Mike]

Welcome to the forum.

I know that my camera, Canon 20D, can record images in B&W and can be set to emulate different color filters etc.

However, I don't ever use that feature. If I want a B&W image, I convert it using photoshop. Photoshop allows us to tweak and change images with much more freedom that just doing it with the camera. Also, you don't have to guess which filter effect would be best for a shot...you can experiment to no end, once you have the image on your computer.

My suggestion would be to stick with your camera...and get a good editing program, if you don't have one already. Think of it as a digital darkroom.

 

[Don Simon]

Shooting in colour and then processing in software is the way to go if you want black and white images from a dSLR. Software processing is what any dSLR will do anyway if you set it to black & white, so you may as well do it yourself and have more control over it. Simply desaturating doesn't give you much control; try using channel mixer instead.

Shooting black and white film and scanning is an option too, I do that as well but still use Photoshop for the scanned images in order to 'convert' them to black and white.

 

[markc]

Most digital sensors use RBG elements. For you to be able to use the B&W filter the way you are used to, you'd need a sensor that records light the way B&W film does. Probably not going to happen. The good thing is that you can use the channel mixer to emulate the filters, as others have mentioned. There are also plug-ins out there that will convert color pictures to B&W using pre-set curves to emulate the look of popular B&W film/developer/paper combos.

Here's a Bibble plug-in called Andy: http://www.nexi.com/156

 

[cosmonaut]

The very best way is to shoot in color and then convert the picture with channel mixer in PhotoShop. There are many adjustments that can be done that way. Go to channel mixer pick the strongest channel red, green or blue and then just have fun...
Cosmo