Black & white 'conversion'

[Don Simon]

I didn't want to post this in the Critique section, partly for fear of being completely torn to pieces, but also because I don't know how this will show up on your monitors since it looked very different on the monitor of the computer I scanned it into than the monitor of the one I'm using to post it now. I haven't really got the whole calibration business sorted. Anyway hopefully you'll see something that's reasonably similar to what I'm seeing; please feel free to critique in any way.

This is from a pretty boring set of shots I took yesterday in the local woods. I couldn't find much to shoot so decided simply to test the meters on my cameras. This one was taken using Delta 400 with my Minolta Dynax 5 (35mm) and standard 50mm f1.7 lens, and scanned with a CanoScan 8400F flatbed. Delta is of course a b&w film, hence my use of quotation marks for 'conversion'. This is the photo as scanned from neg and inverted...

http://thephotoforum.com/gallery/files/5164-11a.jpg

And here's the same image with 'conversion' in Channel Mixer...

I think I prefer the first one, because of the colouring on the leaves and also I think the effect of the sunlight shining through is more obvious. What do you think? Also what do you think of the conversion? Thanks for looking!

Edit: Doh... I forgot about the max pixel count... fixed now...

 

[Holly]

I prefer the second one.. The top one is to *Red* for me... YOu can lighten up the black and white if you feel its to dark, but I think it looks good. You can use the curves adjustment to lighten it

Hope you dont mind my edit.. Just to show you

Your darker photo has more *FEEL* to it them Mine I think.. SO light isnt always a good thang

 

[Don Simon]

Thanks for the edit, I prefer yours to mine since more detail is visible in your edit, also I'm big on high-contrast. There doesn't seem to be much detail showing up on mine, although that could be just this monitor. Anyway thanks again!

 

[LaFoto]

I'm with Holly here ... when I scan my negatives (that was when my scanner still did the job for me ... seems like no one no longer builds anything "for eternities" ... ), I usually have to convert them to true black+white, too!

And I like Holly's edit ... might have suggested the same, but only suggested.