This Week's Photography Hint . . .

[R. Doug]

Using your camera's built-in yellow, orange, red, and green "digital filters" to enhance your Black & White photography:  Black & White Photography—It's All in the Color!

[R. Doug]

More B&W photography hints on filtering:  Black & White Filtering After the Picture is Taken (and with FREE Software!)

This one is geared toward those with point-and-shoot cameras, or who want even more filtering control than even that built into more expensive DSLRs.

[telracs]

Using your camera's built-in yellow, orange, red, and green "digital filters" to enhance your Black & White photography:  Black & White Photography—It's All in the Color!

I knew that black and white wasn't really black and white back in my last film days.  the shop accidentally printed 2 sets of the same roll of film, and the black and white pictures were shaded completely differently in the two runs

[R. Doug]

So, were you making B&W prints from color negative or color slides?  I'm assuming so, and that the difference in shading was because the photo lab filtered the original recorded colors to bring out certain details.

[telracs]

So, were you making B&W prints from color negative or color slides?  I'm assuming so, and that the difference in shading was because the photo lab filtered the original recorded colors to bring out certain details.

apparently my black and white film was being processed in a color processor. 

[R. Doug]

If the photo lab was working with B&W negative film and you got different shading, then it was an inconsistency in the lab work rather than actual red, green, or blue filtering, and all shades would have been shifted rather than select shades based on the color of the subject.  RGB shifting doesn't work on B&W photos because there is no original color information to shift.

[ladyknight33]

Thanks for all the tips you have been posting. I just graduated to a Nikon D3100 from a point and shoot.

[R. Doug]

Thanks for all the tips you have been posting. I just graduated to a Nikon D3100 from a point and shoot.

You're very welcome, LadyKnight33.  I really enjoy doing these little articles, and I'm glad that they're reaching an audience.

And best of luck stepping up to a DSLR.  You'll fall in love with the control over the standard point-and-shoot.  Just to give you an idea of all the features, I really like to read the reviews of cameras on DPReview.  Your camera is reviewed at DPRevies at this link.  It's long (20 pages), but you really might want to read it over for some great information.

[R. Doug]

Today I ran Part II of my series of fireworks photographs, this time with hints and tips on how I took the shots:

4th of July Fireworks Part II (and how I did them)

[R. Doug]

Capturing the vibrant colors of sunsets through exposure compensation and manually setting white balance in:

As Our Hero Rides Into the Sunset

[R. Doug]

This week is on what I call, The Rule of Implied Recognition.

[hakimast]

Some nice tips in there

[R. Doug]

Many thanks.  Glad you're finding some of them useful.

[R. Doug]

Haven't done one of these in a while:  When to Convert to Black & White—Landscapes

[R. Doug]

And the sequel:  When to keep the colors—Landscapes

[R. Doug]

Haven't done one of these in a while, but today I have posted a blog on how to control depth-of-field:

Getting Out of Your Depth (of Field)

[R. Doug]

Haven't done a weekly photo hint in a while, so:  Adding Drama to a Dramatic Sky

You'll learn how to use some of the features in Google's free Picasa photo editing software to do stuff like this:

[adanlerma]

have read your article and downloaded picasa to give it a try, thanks for the heads up and descriptive article, gives me a running start what the various "fixes" menus

looking fwd to seeing how it works, thanks again 

[R. Doug]

You're very welcome, Adan.  Let me know if you need any advice/assistance on running Picasa.

[adanlerma]

You're very welcome, Adan.  Let me know if you need any advice/assistance on running Picasa.

i appreciate that! i've downloaded it and may give it a try tonight, but if not, then hopefully tomorrow

do you go by doug? hate to call you "r" 

i work w/photoshop a lot, but there's stuff that even preview in a mac, or my phone can do, that's all i really need sometimes, so this will be interesting -

looks like by your article, you adj'd temp, etc; am really interested in trying out that graudated tint feature

thanks again, take care 

[adanlerma]

picasa is an interesting and fairly robust little photo editing program, thanks r. doug 

most of the controls are easy sliders, with the slider button and sliding rail nice size, easy to mouse-grip, and fairly easy to slide (not true of all editing programs!)

the softening feature was a nice surprise how well it worked, and the sketch tool type filter was exceptionally good at translating the image in a pleasant way, not too harsh or jaggedy

the program did search and kinda catalog all the images on my harddrive, which i hadn't expected it to do, so i'm not sure if that info is sent or stored somewhere, which i doubt, but it does give the option of having the images in a cloud, which i wouldn't want for most my work, but would be handy for maybe some photos i didn't mind having "out there"

i'll be trying it out more later, as it does have quite a range of filter style adjustments that, in quick testing, also seem to slide-adjust easily and promptly

thanks again r doug, nice program from google

[R. Doug]

Glad you like it so far, Adan.  I find it my go-to program for most quick-and-dirty, get-it-ready-now photo editing.  It doesn't have layers, but for most jobs it does a very adequate job in a most intuitive way, unlike either Photoshop or GIMP.

[R. Doug]

Color Filtering in Black & White Photography Revisited

[dori chatelain]

May I just say that I hate it when someone says "You're camera takes great pictures"  or "You must have a really good camera."  My camera is nice, but I'm the one who decides what it shoots![

Thanks for listening.

And loved the Santorini pictures!

I agree with you. you are the one who decides what the subject is in the picture and how it is placed.

We have many different cameras and some of them are better than others and we have played around with them all. the slr is the best and it takes great pictures. but if you don't know how to set up the object that you are taking the picture of then you are going to  get just an ok picture but if you know how to set up the subject than it will be an awesome picture.

same goes with no matter what camera you use some cameras are better than others. some people make good pictures some people don't.

I took a photography class and this is something I learned in class and I tested that theory out. I took 3 of our cameras out and took pictures. I took the same pictures with each camera to see what results I would get. It was fun to see the differences in the cameras qualities.

So I wouldn't be insulted when somebody tells you that your camera takes good pictures. I usually say thank you I know I make good pictures with my camera....

I really love making pictures. There is a big difference between making a picture and taking a picture.

[R. Doug]

Well put, Dori.