How To Shoot In Black & White on a DVX-100??

The Horse from the Midwest is right. You cannot shoot in black & white on the DVX.

You will actually be able to control the picture more in post by doing black & white there and adjusting your contrast and brightness to achieve the desired look you are going for.

You can however monitor in black & white by using the viewfinder or by using an external monitor. This should give you a general guideline and then you just achieve the look in post.
 
remember to mess with your NLE settings when you go to B&W. don't just pull all the saturation out. use a "channel mixer" and see where the succulant part of the contrast is hiding.
 
Its also well worth putting on a yellow or red filter when shooting to increase contrast as you would in traditional B&W photography
 
finding succulance

finding succulance

robmyers said:
remember to mess with your NLE settings when you go to B&W. don't just pull all the saturation out. use a "channel mixer" and see where the succulant part of the contrast is hiding.
Click to expand...
:grin: does this mean using transparent filters over the image to find greatest contrasts/
I am an old film re tread shoting now in dv so i think in terms of color difference and Hienschigel and filter packs
process ,
please explain some of your software proceedure steps to find the quality "succulance " ..i am no trying to funny ...we are using a dvx for color recording then a certain amount will go out to film as color and the rest we hope will be black and white ,,,,
 
So I thought there was a way somehow to do it in camera, but I tried it and realized I was wrong:) But it made me think of a question. What settings do you guys think would make Black and White look best? I guess its kind of subjective, but maybe I'm just looking for ways to make doing B+W in post look its best. Thanks.
-Ryan
 
I do a lot of stuff in black and white, because I love the way it looks.
I don't do much to adjust in the camera, but on set I always try to light with the hardest light source I can. In post I use (in Vegas) a Black & White effect and Brightness Contrast effect. I set my black & white to 100% and then built a setting that I have called 'WICKED' where I boost the brightness and decrease the contrast to get very hard whites and blacks. It gives it a very greyless quality that appeals to me. It all depends on what kind of look you are going for.
 
in film for cinema lighting we use backlight and rim light etc enhance contrast and overal seperation of the image from the background .
John Alton was the master of this along with Greg Toland ,Cortez .
So good black and white photography starts with lighting issues .
The next cinema type step would be filtration
a red filter over a cinema camera turns the blue sky almost black .This is based on the color difference theory (heinshigel theory ) .
so the answer starts outside the camera with subject reflectivity then lighting then filtration .
i am too new to the dvx to know anything about the settings ...yet
hope that helps a little ..... :thumbup:
Bruce
 
Whats the difference between a Red 25 filter and a Red 25A Filter. I see there is a different filter factor with the A being an 8 (3 stops) and the 25 being 3 ( 2 stops)
anything else?
 
that would be great but i bet putting a red filter over the lens of a DVX would send the DV codec in to a panic. you would probably get really jagged results, that way. the image would look pixlated from the compression.

I find that dropping the color to -7 helps reduce the color noise, and makes red a little less likely to show up pixelated. this way it looks a touch less digital. more organic.
 
Your question has already been answered but I have Final Cut Pro and I can just go in and take the color out of anything I shoot...it looks quite nice actually!
 
I don't think color filters work with digital cameras the way it it works with black and white film.

I did darkroom work with black and white film processing (eons ago at a daily paper) and we used amber (red) light in the darkroom, which didn't affect black and white film. We also used Rubylith (red film) to mask out negatives.

Blue, on the other hand, tends to be sensitive oh black and white film.

In the old b+w movies, blue-eyed actors/actresses posed problems with the cameraman... their eyes didn't seem to have depth (looked too light).

I remember reading about how James Wong Howe who came to be a great cinematographer ... he figured out how to get blue eyes to register as dark. He used a large black cloth which reflected in the actor's eyes.

I'm pretty sure red/yellow filters don't affect ccd's the same way as black and white film... it has to do with black and white film limitations, rather than physics.

Ofcourse, I could be wrong... never having tried using a red filter on a ccd camera.
 
a test is in order

a test is in order

stabwound said:
I don't think color filters work with digital cameras the way it it works with black and white film.

I did darkroom work with black and white film processing (eons ago at a daily paper) and we used amber (red) light in the darkroom, which didn't affect black and white film. We also used Rubylith (red film) to mask out negatives.

Blue, on the other hand, tends to be sensitive oh black and white film.

In the old b+w movies, blue-eyed actors/actresses posed problems with the cameraman... their eyes didn't seem to have depth (looked too light).

I remember reading about how James Wong Howe who came to be a great cinematographer ... he figured out how to get blue eyes to register as dark. He used a large black cloth which reflected in the actor's eyes.

I'm pretty sure red/yellow filters don't affect ccd's the same way as black and white film... it has to do with black and white film limitations, rather than physics.

Ofcourse, I could be wrong... never having tried using a red filter on a ccd camera.
Click to expand...
:thumbsup:
Great post on black and white film !!!
i agree .....film style filtration and dv is a clash question for me .
this most likly will not work.... ill do a test
red filters and yellow filter make the sky dark and the clouds stand out on black and white film .
In anolouge vidio many filtration laws still held But in in dv ?????
As I said Ill do a test and post a verbal on results unless someone has a filter thread on this site ?????
The one thing i hold out for is ......
I guess the dvx100aa like all other cameras is just trying to see and record what is there ?in most cases ?
When I hold a yellow or red filter up to a cloudy sky the contrast increase is immediate and dramatic to the unassisted eye .i figure the dvx will see and record this .Why not ??
meantime anyone have a refence to past threads on this sit
I have sent away for cd filters test showing the effect of filters on skin tones and the laws of filtration in the case of smoke tobacco filters etc FOR FILM seem to hold true for DIGITAL VIDEO WORK as well .
Is the dvx100a working or processing images off a compression algorythm which ......
limits red bue etc ?
Anyone ????
Barry ? :shocked:
 
red in general is difficult for a dv codec to solve. so using colored filters especailly red really messes with the computer in the camera.

I actually went a nd got a piece of red gel, and i will perform a test in a few minutes a ndt post a grab of how it looks just because i like you guys....
 
TheYankee said:
built a setting that I have called 'WICKED' where I boost the brightness and decrease the contrast to get very hard whites and blacks. It gives it a very greyless quality that appeals to me. It all depends on what kind of look you are going for.
Click to expand...

Are you sure you don't mean you boost the contrast and if anything increase the brightness as well? I use vegas as well and am following your instructions exactly....If I bring up the brightness and decrease the contrast...if anything it brings more grey and by "decreasing the contrast" it doesn't give hard whites and blacks....I don't know that's just me..... It has hard blacks and whites when I boost the contrast and bring up the brightness to the right amount.
 
some more poss untranslatable cine filter history

some more poss untranslatable cine filter history

Great try orange and golden and yellow
For sky shots the clouds may still stand out if the codec does not throw a fit
some history
it would be neat if the following worked in digital video But
Here is cine process for instantanious self matting composite .
It was called Dunning Pomery proceess and the inventor was C Dodge Dunning.
Anyway we start with the fore ground where IN FRONT OF A FILM CAMERA WITH BLACK AND WHITE RAW FILM STOCK , there is an orange dya postive
one could think that this is just an orange transparency of a background scene (like the eifel tower ) hung in front of the camera BUT it has a balanced negative image combined on the same tranparency which is also orange dye to balance out the total density .
the actor (at mid ground ) walks in front of a blue screen and he is side- lighted in straw yellow or orange light .
The blue background works as a printer light when it hits the orange dya postive and produced a very dense grey to almost black image where ever the actor is not standing or moving .
These backgrounds using 1930 film stock usually looked very washed out so they used an arch to intimate areal perspective .
.When the process became advanced they had a bipacked dye a postive running in the camera to make a moving background .
In a way even though this worked I say Thank Goodnes that is all over !!!
Thank goodnes for dv and advance nle systems .
Yet something about a instantanious (film ) traveling matt gets me facinated

the idea of exhausting all the filter testing knowledge from film and let whatever can cross over do so into digital video ...i think that is something I hope for .
:happy:
Cheers
Bruce
 
there seems too be a short and concise answer in the new string about red light at concerts ...
Red and blue are a low res issue with the dvx100a .
Now what is left
fo0r enhancingh a finished product in black and white assuming that you wish to enhance the image of thee dv recorded image for black and white output .What about filtration with green ? maybe orange ? maybe yellow ? to build contrast but then what is the side effect ?
dark noise ?
:shocked:
 
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