Page 204 - Friedman Archives

204 The “Recording” (Camera icon) Menu Settings

Rightly or wrongly, this is the perception and paradigm that we all must
live with. And while Sony graced your camera with a B&W and Sepia
mode to save you the trouble of creating the B&W image on your
computer, I’ll bet it could also be used for wedding couples with a degree
in art. (B&W and Sepia mode are two of the Image Styles described a
couple of sections ago.)

B/W mode has other practical applications too. Besides taking pictures
which others perceive as being more artistic, it can also save you from RBL
(Really Bad Light) in some circumstances. For example, Figure 5-51 is a
shot of a Chinese boy on his father’s shoulders. The child is backlit, with
little direct light hitting the boy’s face. This light is just awful, but when
shot in B&W mode the poor lighting hardly gets noticed.
Want the best of both worlds? Earlier in the book I mentioned that if you
shoot in B/W or Sepia mode, then the color is gone forever and it can’t be
recovered. UNLESS, that is, you choose MENU  1  Quality 
RAW & JPEG, in which case the camera will record one color and one
B&W image for each picture you take. Kind of like a safety net! RAW
and JPEG are all covered in Chapter 14.

TIP: I have found that I’m able to get very
pleasing B&W shots by setting the B/W Creative
Style to Contrast: +2 and Sharpness: +1.

Contents of this book Copyright © 2014 Gary L. Friedman. All rights reserved.