Few Showjumping pics...

[Agfa]

Just few pics I have taken whilst getting to gribs with my new camera...pretty new to photography and I know there far from perfect so any tips or CC welcome

Fav one

 

[musicaleCA]

These are some good shots for just starting out. Based on the info in the files I'm going to ask two questions. 9a) Did you shoot these in "B&W" on camera, and (b) are you shooting RAW or JPEG Medium (if the latter, I suggest learning how to use RAW as quick as you can and shooting with it; it will give you WAY more flexibility in the long run)?

 

[Agfa]

Hi MusicaleCA: Thanks for the comments

Yes I used the B&W setting on camera....found it as I was taking pics so had a play! Also I think im shooting in JPEG..not 100% (sound a bit silly I know) haha

So what benifits would shooting in RAW give me?Sorry like I said new to this

 

[musicaleCA]

I'm just going to spit out the advice I have here, and not in your other thread. I suggest you go find a mod to help sort out this double-thread business. It's liable to get confusing and hurt my brain.

The RAW file is uncompressed (well, unless you're shooting Canon's sRAW) information straight from the camera's sensor, and it contains quite a bit more information than a lowly JPEG. By shooting in RAW you commit to post-processing, but shooting RAW will allow you to adjust colour temperature with precision, so if you make a mistake in camera with white balence, it's a piece of cake to fix later (how this has saved me so many times when I shot outside and left my camera's WB set for fluorescent lights *headdesk*. You simply can't do that with JPEG, because the information has been discarded.

Similarly, when doing a B&W conversion, it's best to shoot in colour (RAW is preferable) and then convert to B&W in post-processing. One method is using a channel mixer and setting it to monochrome, then adjusting the levels of red, green, and blue. Programs like Lightroom or Photoshop will let you go even further and adjust the levels of red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple, and magenta.

Just don't do it in camera, and don't do it by changing the "mode" or colour space of the picture to "Greyscale". Whenever you do this, the camera (or program) is simply discarding the colour information and assigning a luminance value based on the total luminosities of RGB in each pixel. The short story is that you're losing a lot of information when you do this, and keeping that colour information will give you more control over the final B&W image.

And I'm still new too. A word of warning: This is a serious addiction.