11-21-2009
I hardly ever set my camera on any of the in-camera settings, such as black & white, or vivid, or sepia. I always prefer to do image-tweaking in post-production for two reasons: my computer has much more finesse than the in-camera processor, and I prefer to have the choice of using the original in color. Having said that, I was experimenting tonight with the black & white setting on my Canon XTi, perhaps for the first time.
I took this shot in my kitchen; the lighting was from one overhead fixture with two CFL bulbs. I shot it hand-held at 1/15 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1600, with no image-stabilization. I was trying to replicate the old-school days of shooting pushed Tri-X in available light, manual focus, manual everything. My only comfort was the chimp-factor avaiable with the digital camera.
My dog, Pepper, has the most amazing dog eyes. She has some sort of genetic eye-liner which makes most women jealous. (You can’t see it in this image, but she also has a pretty dark moustache, so I guess that evens it out…)
In line with this attempt, it might be fun to really go old-school and turn off the LCD display, shoot without chimping and then seeing how the images come out later. I could even force myself to wait three days to see the results, just like the good old days.
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