A Black and White Photograph?

I'm not saying this is a good photograph, but it's an important one for me.

For about eight or nine months now, I have been shooting black and white almost exclusively. I've spent a long time getting to know how my camera works best in capturing a black and white image; how to process the files but more importantly how to think black and white whilst out shooting. I've certainly missed a few potentially amazing colour shots and trained myself to ask "how would it look in mono?". So it's been a lesson in ignoring these situations.

One thing to understand as I say this is I do still capture that colour information in-camera; I set my Nikon D200 to black and white mode as well as RAW+JPEG output. This means I get a black and white JPEG image and a RAW file containing all the original colour information from the time of capture. This gives me greater flexibility when processing the file to tweak tonal values to exactly how I like them; also, there is a lack of control in the D200 as to how the JPEG will be processed in-camera, for example I can't tell it to dial down (or up) the contrast. I still like to have a black and white JPEG as it gives a pretty good idea what I was looking for at the time of shooting; a good reference when processing files later.

So for this shot, as with all others, I had seen the colour version briefly before processing the raw file into the mono end result. And I have to say I was very taken with it as a colour photo. To cut a long story a little shorter, I couldn't get the mono photo to look as I wanted: warm highlights and cooler shadows; something along the lines of split toning. Which cannot be done in Apple Aperture software (as far as I can tell). So I switched back to the colour version which gave me exactly as I wanted.

So even though this was shot as a black and white photo, I have used the colour version. As a stand alone image, this may look a bit obvious, but it does kind of fit in with all the toned mono images I have produced as part of this set. I have to say I found myself in a bit of a dilemma over this because I have set myself quite strict guidelines. I really want to master the black and white image digitally, but here I am with a colour photo. This may not bother most people but for me it's something to worry over.

UPDATE 27 Jan 2009
Here is the original JPEG straight from camera.
[image]

Suffolk, January 2009

Auto ISO on the D200

The Writing part of this website is sadly lacking at the moment. Although I do have a few imported articles, posts and assignments that are currently awaiting a dash of tidying up before they are released into the wild. I have some ideas I'd like to share on the subject of photography and rather than put them on the other blog (not this site, I don't really see it as a blog) I'll post it here.

Yesterday I took my D200 out into the forest local to my parents' house in Suffolk. It was cold and a heavy fog had settled the night before. My walk took me along windy paths through dense woodland; wide forest tracks with open sky above and across open, cleared land too. So the available light was pretty much changing for each new shot.

Most if the time, I use Aperture Priority mode on the D200. The reasons for this is it provides the most creative opportunities whilst hand-holding the camera. I am restricted to fast shutter speeds to reduce camera shake so my only other variable is ISO. In good light, such as a bright or sunny day this isn't much of an issue. Shutter speeds are fast, I can set ISO to 100 or 200 and use any aperture setting I like. But much of my shooting is in poor light or indoors. Or so it seems at this time of the year. So my creative choices are sometimes limited unless I choose a higher ISO.

Anyway, whilst I was out yesterday, all this ISO switching got me thinking about the Auto ISO function on my camera. I'd previously dismissed it as a pretty pointless idea, I'm not sure why. But it occurred to me yesterday that in my situation, it might save me a bit of bother. The D200 gives two options to fiddle with; the first being minimum shutter speed; the second being maximum ISO. I set the former to 1/100 second as I was shooting at 28mm at the time (I like to triple the focal length when using a minimum shutter speed to be safe) and the latter to ISO 800. Later on I changed this to 400. Noise on the D200 is well controlled, anything up to ISO 400 is as noiseless as I need in most situations. And I don't worry too much about it anyway when it does appear especially when shooting black and white. But even so, I prefer it wasn't there if possible.

The resulting behaviour of my camera was pretty interesting. Where the light was good enough, the ISO remained at 100 for my chosen aperture. In lower light levels, the ISO would creep up whilst keeping the shutter speed at 1/100 and my chosen aperture. For some shots, I saw it creeping up towards 800 and increased my aperture a little to bring it down again. After a while, I realised what I was doing and decided to reduce my maximum ISO to 400 instead.

So, a simple equation. I get the lowest ISO possible at a good shutter speed. I've not had to think about adjusting anything but aperture, which is what I want. So far, this is working well.

But after a few more shots, I get out into a more open area and find that I want to go to the shortest focal length on that lens: 17mm. And now, the minimum shutter speed is too fast. I can very safely reduce it to 1/60 second. But I have to go back to the camera menu to do this. What a pain. I found that I was going into the menu quite often to make this change; adjusting the minimum shutter speed up and down depending on focal length. So I realise now it's best for prime lenses or if you're just shooting at mainly one focal length or I suppose I could have just set it to something suitable for the entire zoom range of that lens.

During my walk, light conditions deteriorated and some subjects were in quite deep gloom. I found the camera was maxing out on ISO, even though I was shooting at fastest aperture f2.8. So how did Auto ISO behave? Well, it finally did allow a compromise on shutter speed: this crept down to slower speeds unsuitable for hand-holding. In which cases a tripod would have come into play. But for me, I just leaned the camera into a handy tree trunk and carried on. It's good to know that it still let me get the shots.

Will I use auto ISO again? Probably. But only in similar circumstances. If I find myself needing to change ISO too much, then I'll certainly turn it on. But it's a shame that this function couldn't have been developed further for this camera: I'm sure Nikon could couple minimum shutter speed to some inverse multiple of the focal length. Maybe this has already been done in newer models. I have no idea.

And what about a minimum aperture opening setting for those that want to shoot on Shutter Speed Priority? Or what if I want to decide aperture and shutter speed and let the camera adjust ISO to get the right exposure?

In fact, thinking about it I should probably see what happens when the camera is set to Shutter Speed Priority mode when using Auto ISO.

Photos to follow.