Does PhotoLab 5 have an option to take a dng image and convert it to black & white?

DxO PhotoLab
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Ha!!! That was the goal, and I guess it worked. Since the boat was rocking back and forth quite a bit, I guess I could have taken the photo when the mast was at the greatest angle, but to be honest, I was watching for the “white water” and wanted to capture it in a position I liked.

What I did was totally against “photojournalism”, but I’ve changed. Tilting the boat more, and making the water dark (and menacing) was me having fun at creating an image like what I had in my mind. In every way, what you did is technically better, and the result is a technically better photograph.

About the examples above - yikes!!!

For the purpose I had in mind, sailboat in storm, whitecaps, boat rocking, the less “stable” the final image, the better. The way I cropped it was to get that effect, with the boat off to the right. The photo is no longer “balanced”.

…but thank you! I learned a lot from what you did, and how it changed the photo in so many ways.

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:smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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I think lots of people here are creating “art”, but your images strike me the artsi-ist, as being something I would like to be able to create. The photojournalism hat was like dragging a heavy load behind me, slowing me down. The way I have been thinking since I spent two months in India is being “free”, no restrictions.

You will probably be pleased - I sold my second D750 this morning, and shipped it off to the new owner, who is sending me a second payment. I then called BH Photo, and discussed the used Nikon D780 cameras they had in stock - three of them. I bought a used one in “like new” condition. I have no idea how it compares to your D850, but I should be able to come closer to what I was trying to do before. The D750 is from 2014. The D780 is from last year, and includes features from Nikon’s latest “mirrorless” cameras, not to mention 4K video which I probably won’t use very much, if at all.

My enthusiasm for my M10 Leica is as strong as ever, but mounting a 135mm lens and using the rangefinder is a pain, and if I mount the Visoflex on top, it’s changing the M10 into a poor substitute for a DSLR. So, I’ll have my M10 for “street photography”, and “walkabouts”, and I’ll have an improved D750 for use when the M10 isn’t a good choice. The new camera arrives this coming Sunday - then I need to learn it, and find some appropriate places to aim it, without copying what I’ve done for years now.

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Take a look on Nikon’s site - they have a comparator.

What I most love about the D850 is the 45Mpx, which allows me to crop much further if absolutely necessary.

The main problem that I see there is the lack of compatibility for lenses - with DxO’s modules not available for some

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I started looking for it on the nikonusa.com website, but had no luck. Can you please send me a link to this?

I also couldn’t find a spec for “dynamic range”. I did however, go to:
https://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d780.htm
…where he has many sunset photos taken with the D780, all with perfect exposure straight from the camera. He did much better than I could do with the D750.

B&H is very fast - they sent me a notice that it will be delivered in three days, Sunday my time.

That is something I would like to have. I could always buy the new Leica M11, for a mere $9,000 and get 60 Mpx. Weight, D780 = 840 grams; weight, D850 = 1015 grams. If I was younger, or stronger, or something’er, maybe this wouldn’t matter. Weight of my Leica M10 = 660 grams.

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I’m very good at finding things that don’t work for me. My question is how do a select a Preset for a specific b&w film in DXO FILMPACK.

I picked another one of my photos of the work-boat pushing the barge. I wanted to use the FilmPack’s “Fuji ACROS” film, but there is no place in the long list of things that are shown under FILMPACK that I can click on to view all the films, so I can select Fuji ACROS. So, what am I doing wrong, or what am I missing?

Files:
L1004328 | 2022-09-26.dng.dop (14.1 KB)
L1004328 | 2022-09-26.dng (29.9 MB)

L1004328 2022-09-26_DxO-1
L1004328 2022-09-26_DxO-11800×1183 210 KB

It’s not a very good photo, too cluttered, and it’s never going to get much better, but I’m trying to select the PreSet from FILMPACK, and I don’t know how.

(I did change some of my other settings, based on what I learned from the sailboat photo, but this is just a practice photo so I can learn how to select a specific film for my “Preset”. What am I missing?

I did some searching, and found this, but I don’t think that’s how I’m supposed to do it??
https://forum.dxo.com/t/photolab-presets-for-filmpack-5-film-types-are-now-available/9255

Thanks - I couldn’t find anything, but I guess you’re better at searching than I.

To me, it looks like a tie, and for shooting into the sun, if I’m using ISO 100 or 200, the D780 should be better than my D750 was - and Ken Rockwell’s photos illustrate this. Of course, Nikon may introduce a D880, and improve even better - which along with the larger sensor would put it back at the top.

Back to this forum, I struggled with sunset photos last year, and even using all the suggestions in this forum, it took a lot of work to get a good photo with the sun in the picture. Again, Ken Rockwell’s photos make it seem effortless now.

I don’t want a “mirrorless” camera, even the Z9 from Nikon, which I couldn’t afford anyway. The M10 struggles with dynamic range - which I found when looking at other people’s photos in the Leica Forum. I’ll have to try this myself early this coming week, and see what the D780 does in my hands.

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I too had difficulty find the DR. DxO Mark don’t yet list the D780 and the best I could eventually find was 11.2 stops, which is a good 3.4 stops less that the D850.

  1. Go to the Color Rendering tool on the FilmPack palette, or whichever palette you have placed it.

  2. Drop down the Category and choose Black And White Film…

    Capture d’écran 2022-09-30 à 13.52.35
    Capture d’écran 2022-09-30 à 13.52.351762×1002 128 KB

  3. Drop down the Rendering and you should see a whole list of films with the Fuji one amongst them…

Capture d’écran 2022-09-30 à 13.52.58
Capture d’écran 2022-09-30 à 13.52.581793×1002 125 KB

1 Like
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Check this here:
https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Nikon%20D780,Nikon%20D850

The D850 is 3/4 of a stop “better” at ISO values below 800. At higher ISOs, the D780 “wins”.

Typo? More than three stops would be quite a thing!

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Maybe I’m blind. Here is a screen capture -
Screen Shot 2022-09-30 at 11.18.20

Which of these choices do I click on?

I do see something for “Color Rendering”, but it only brings up these choices:
Screen Shot 2022-09-30 at 11.21.21

I’m sure this isn’t the proper list, as it should have many more choices to select from???

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When you say there should be many more on the list, are you referring to the Fujifilm types or other film types? If you referring to the Fujifilm types, this particular list represents the same film types available in-camera for Fuji X-trans bodies. There are other choices besides the Digital films in the drop down list . There are color positive films, color negative films, black and white films, etc. You just need to look and try one of them They cover a wide variety of additional film types from various manufacturers. Select the other options available in color rendering and you will find everything that’s available. There are close to 100 film types available altogether.

Mike, you need to try a little experimentation on your part to find things. I would think you would find that much more satisfying than having to ask us a question at every turn. Keep in mind, that none of us were born with this knowledge. Most of what we know about PhotoLab, besides the user manual and perhaps some other training material, came from experimentation and trial and error.

I’m certainly not suggesting you should not ask questions if you’re stuck. By all means, please do. I know, that we all may learn differently. However, It seems when you hit a roadblock you don’t spend very much time trying to figure out your way around it and immediately turn to us for help. Unfortunately, you’re lack of willingness to experiment on your own and you’re need for step by step feedback from us is likely one of the main reasons it’s taking you so long to master much more than the basic functionality of this software.

If we were not available to help you, what would you do? Would you just give up and move on to other software, or would you try to figure it out yourself?

Mark

3 Likes
40

I agree with you, but it’s as if I’m using a different program. Please help me make up my mind. :slight_smile:

I did the same thing before, but @Joanna responded:

" 1. you used the digital version of Fuji Acros instead of the “Fuji Neopan Acros™ 100” version from FilmPack - the digital version is nowhere near as subtle as the “film” version.”

I’m obviously searching in the wrong place. I didn’t know there were two versions, one “digital”, and one “film”.

You don’t need to do all my thinking for me, but please do give me a hint on how to get to the version @Joanna prefers, the “film version”. Since Film Pack appears in my Workspace, I assume there is something to click on to access it, but nothing seems to make sense. There must be a difference, or Joanna wouldn’t have pointed this out. I thought I was doing the obvious thing to select this…

“Everything is easy once you know how to do it!”

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Mike, I did tell you how to get to the other available filmtypes. They are all available in the color rendering section. What part of what I wrote is confusing to you? Just choose from the other options available in that drop down list other than the Digital filmtypes

Mark

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Aha!!! Yes, it worked!!!

Thank you!!!

Screen Shot 2022-09-30 at 14.06.03
Screen Shot 2022-09-30 at 14.06.03416×784 178 KB

Shouldn’t all this be down at the bottom of my screen, under the Category: DXO FILMPACK ??

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Because it is not exclusive to FilmPack. You can remove it from the Color palette and add it to the FilmPack palette if you want. Don’t forget to resave your workspace once you’ve done it.

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Aha! As far as I know, my Workspace is still “Advanced”, and I don’t feel like changing anything.

Current settings and image:
L1004328 | 2022-09-26.dng.dop (16.7 KB)

L1004328 2022-09-26_DxO-1
L1004328 2022-09-26_DxO-11800×1183 210 KB

It’s not a photo I intend to share or anything, but it does look like a very plausible photo I might have taken with B&W film.

Gosh, it’s strange that things that looked so “confusing” before, now seem plausible and make sense. Day after day, week after week, PL5 feels more “intuitive” to me. This forum is more and more like a classroom. I should send each of you an apple!

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I assume you meant you can accomplish that by creating custom versions of those two palettes since standard palettes can’t be modified.

Mark

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Lots of information on this topic.

Going back to the first Nik plugins, SilverEfex was the first one I bought. I really liked the results. Starting out serious shooting in the late 1960s, I was a Tri-X guy (mostly) and Nik certainly caught that emulsion. In college, a couple of my classmates were shooting Ilford B&W and when I tried those emulsions in Nik, they also looked like what my buddies had been producing. Since then, the Nik plugins went through some ownership changes, and I ended up with the whole suite.

With the advent of mirrorless (Fuji) I’ve settled on a routine of shooting with Acros simulation in the cameras, but also saving RAW. I’ve also shifted from mostly PhotoShop to mostly PhotoLab. Sometimes the B&W JPEGs are fine, but sometimes they need a little more help in PP (I shoot a fair amount of night shots) to get a little more out of the file, or to add color filters. It may just be a habit, but I prefer SilverEfex over FilmPack. I’m in the middle of a long-term project with 99.99% of the photos in B&W. When I was in school, I always knew how the image would render with Tri-X, but a few decades later – not so much. So shooting in the Acros setting is very nice. (Kinda cheating, but nice.)

Prior to mirrorless, I shot with an M8, and then an M9. After about my second card with the M8, I decided not to bother with JPEGs at all. The camera saved faster with just DNGs, and those Leica DNGs were the easiest to work with of any RAW format.

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Hey, welcome to the forum! I’ve also got an M8, but mostly use it with an infrared filter, for some spectacular B&W results - very dark skies, white leaves, and so on. I still love my M8.2, but I mostly reach for my M10.

I’m curious why you shoot jpg alongside the raw images. I’ve got a Fuji X100F, and I tried shooting jpg+raf but I rarely used the jpg images. What are the reasons you prefer one over the other? If you have time, maybe upload some of your results here, and tell us what you used, and how you processed it. I used Lightroom for years, and switched to PL for several reasons.

What you wrote about the M8 - that camera had a terrible way of processing jpg images. So many people said so much about it, and after seeing my own results, I completely switched over to the .dng format.

People in this forum have hit me over the head when I posted a few images in jpg format. I guess even if they look fine, there is no way to make big changes if I need to. The last shoot that I did in India, family photos, had me shooting in jpg+raf, but nobody else was interested in my .raf images. They preferred jpg, for ease of use. Which Fuji are you using? In many ways, I preferred the version with interchangeable lenses, but I’ve never used one of them.

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I shoot the JPEGs because sometimes you just need a quicky. Also, you can run through them in Bridge pretty fast and get a feel for how the day’s shooting went. I like Bridge because it allows me to keep my own filing system.

Fujis? X100F, X-T3, X-T4, GFX50S II, and X30.

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Most people who shoot RAW+JPG seem to do so because they have need of an immediate JPG for dispatch to someone or somewhere.

But every RAW file already contains a full size JPG file created by the camera, which can be extracted using something like ExifTool…

exiftool -jpgfromraw -b _JNA0001.NEF > _JNA0001.jpg

Of course, this gives you a file that has already been processed by the camera according to the (crude) picture settings available and really isn’t suitable for “real” processing in the way that the RAW file would be.

If you have no immediate need for a JPG whilst shooting, all you are doing by saving RAW+JPG is using up more space on your memory cards.

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