Black & White

Shawn Murphy

Shawn Murphy

Well-known member
If I'm not mistaken, the only way to get a "black and white" look from the DVX100A is in post?

If so, has anyone done anything in Vegas to achieve this look?

There's a post over in "Screen Grabs" with some images that look pretty good:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showthread.php?threadid=25734

...achieved in FCP, if anyone has tips (and clips) for getting this in-camera and/or in Vegas, it would be greatly appreciated!

~Shawn
 
Thank you and my apologies for not (rtfm yet), I just installed V5 last week, and didn't realize it was that easy. I'll run a few tests now with some of the stuff I captured this weekend. I hope it looks believable (what is "believable"? well, I guess what I mean is that it looks aesthetically pleasing to my eyes and tastes, and is comparatively similar to B/W shot on film)

btw, are their any pros and cons for various scene settings in the 100A that impact the way that effect renders?
 
ok, that looked ok, then I added the 'Darker, More Contrast' treatment from 'Brightness and Contrast' and that looked even better.

l'll experiment, and if there are any tutorials or tips specific to achieving various B/W looks (high contrast noir?), please point the way.
 
Here is a cool one. Make a second copy of your clip on the line under the first copy. Then on the first copy, key out the red in the roses (or some other primary color thingy), THEN apply B&W effect. You end up with B&W clip with red roses.... That's already more than I know. Good Luck.
 
I thought I saw a tutorial on that somewhere.. definitely a fun trick, I'm sure I'll try that out for some fun eye candy (or a music video). Thanks.
 
Shawn Murphy said:
ok, that looked ok, then I added the 'Darker, More Contrast' treatment from 'Brightness and Contrast' and that looked even better.

l'll experiment, and if there are any tutorials or tips specific to achieving various B/W looks (high contrast noir?), please point the way.
Click to expand...

If you want a good Noir look, you have to start with the lighting. Light for contrast.

Then, more than the B&W filter, I'd use the Primary Color Corrector; desaturate to 0 and lower the offset. Then put on a contrast filter.

You can also add a layer of white diffusion and some film grain.

http://img56.exs.cx/img56/7866/noir22yk.jpg
 
I found that Channel Blend works better than B&W filter. You just set all channels to have same combination of R,G,B, and start playing with that. I would start with all three channels set to 0.3R, 0.5G and 0.2B as a starting point, and take it from there.
 
I also prefere working with channels to get black and white. SOme scenes benefite from using just a specific channel, like if you want great looking skin tones, use just or mostly the red channel, this will get rid of blemishes and red spots. If you have outdoor scens you can even mask channels to get dark skies and light trees, or whatever. There is much more to black and white though color than just desaturating.
 
My advice with black and white is to crush the haitis out of the black levels; either 0 IRE or even 7.5.

I hate seeing B & W with the shadows being 'hazy' as if viel has been layed over the image. Crush it!
 
Another trick, similar to Scharky's, is to change the "hue" to find a nice shade.

This changes the colours, but since you're working with BW, it just changes what's black/white/gray.

Changing hue 180 degrees would invert everything, making what was white black, and vis-versa -- probably not what you're looking for, but a subtle shift can really pop a scene.
 
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