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Konica Minolta Alpha Sweet (Dynax 5d)

These are some comparison pictures I quickly made up one morning. I used Manual program to keep aperture and shutter speed constant; ISO 100 and 'Daylight' white balance was used. Unfortunately, I realise now, I shouldn't have taken these so early in the morning, but you can still see differences.

These are linked thumbnails to 3008 by 2000 pixel pictures so you can view them at 100% and see details.	Smaller versions, 500 by 400 pixels
Above: black and white, with polariser Comparison with and without a polariser filter*	Above: black and white, with polariser Above: Comparison with and without a polariser filter*

What's my opinion of the Black and White setting on the camera? Well, it appears that the picture is taken in colour, and immediately a greyscale conversion is done. I assume this from that the sky doesn't appear white, and a polariser isn't needed to show clouds, which otherwise would be needed in real film black and white. With black and white film, the sky would appear white, and with a polariser or a red filter, the sky would appear quite dark (especially so with the red filter), however, as shown, the use of filters makes no difference. Furthermore, opening the mrw (raw file) in PhotoShop Elements 4, the supposed black and white image appears in colour, meaning a conversion has to be (re)done later in post processing. One more thing can be seen, the amount of noise remains constant in the sky, as seen at top.

Conclusion: In all, it's a bit disappointing, as the smoothness and tonal contrast wasn't apparent. It seems further post processing is needed to bring out the natural qualities of black and white; where blacks were black, and whites were white, and everthing else in between was a smooth graduation of greys. Also the the sky, in this case, seems... colour converted. This black and white, in my opinion, is not as we'd seen before digital.

*Shutter speed and F stops were adjusted for neutral exposure (not over nor under exposed)

NB: All pictures were saved once in JPEG and at Maximum 12 (100%) quality to avoid artifacting