Best Black and White setting?

"White Ribbon" was shot all in RGB 2/3" 1080p and had the B&W conversion done in post, but not just by crancking down the saturation. Channel Mixer, or a similar tool as mentioned above, is your friend. It offers amazing choices.
 
Here is sad quote from Wikipedia about Technicolor:
"Very few of the original camera negatives of movies made in Technicolor Process 2 or 3 survive. In the late 1940s, most were discarded from storage at Technicolor in a space-clearing move, after the studios declined to reclaim the materials. Those that survived into the 1950s were often used to make black and white prints for television and simply discarded thereafter. This explains why so many early color films exist today solely in black and white."
 
That's very interesting regarding the "Ed Wood" print, I too was a projectionist in Hollywood at a little theatre called the Vine in the early 90's but I never once had a B&W film in my three years there and I left before "Ed Wood" came out but I will say I think the film had/has achieved an excellent latitude approximating the B&W that it was depicting in the 50's very well, and the special edition DVD that came out a few years ago has an excellent transfer as well, as for the GH-1, I plan to test as soon as I can come up with a suitable setting to start with as there seems to be a grey area (pun) in this regard.
 
Three-strip Technicolor in my opinion has no equals, one need to only look at "Susperia" for IMHO one of the best examples of moody color-I have to be frank in that if I was able to achieve color approximating this magnitude on the GH-1 I would jump but I don't think ANY Digital equivalent makes this possible (Yet) - as for B&W, here is my simple reasoning when VHS first came out the blanks were very expensive (and I was very young!) anyway to put three movies on a six-hour tape was my goal back then and color films just looked really bad but the B&W films tranferred much cleaner and to this day I still look at these tapes and the B&W has survived very well-my point is that I just think B&W and Digital/Video are a pleasing match as color has to much information being compressed/compromised, I'd appreciate a more technical description of what I'm describing as this analogy is pretty weak.
 
Brian,

Yes "Suspiria" is amazing. Did you read the recent "American Cinematographer" article about it?
Back to "Ed Wood", the print I projected at the theater looked gorgeous.
Regarding Technicolor, have you ever seen an actual Technicolor print, as opposed to just a plain color print of a film shot in Technicolor? It's insane. When the print was struck from that "dye imbibation" process, it's like watching a film on LSD. I saw an original Technicolor print of "Meet Me in St. Louis" (don't laugh it's actually a good movie) and I swear there were hues on the screen I had never seen before.
 
Here is a link to the Feb. AC article:http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ac/ac0210/?ap=1#/72

I have not seen an original print-the few copies I have seen were amazing though! The American Cinemateque at the Egyption theatre in Hollywood every few years will have a screening of an I.B. Technicolor print (they are of course older films) and I lately have a newfound appreciation for the classics (and a more open mind!) Film history really has a place in where we've been and where we are going as it's a relatively new medium in terms of time.
 
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