Hi Daniel,
may I ask you, what’s the reason to put your camera to B&W – and how you handle this in PL?
Do you have a certain workflow or are you always experimenting or … ?
[ Personally, having difficulties to ‘imagine’ an adequate contrast for B&W rendering, I did so for some time, but now prefer to switch the developing software temporarily to grayscale conversion to get a first impression … ]
Of course you may ask There are two main reasons, I can correct colour in post but not composition quite so easily - having a B&W rendition of the scene as I capture is less distracting (to me) than a full blown “accurate” rendition in the view finder. The second is focus peaking, I use autofocus lenses but on many occasions want to change the plane of focus (to an imagined hyperfocal point for instance) and have found that if I set the peaking colour setting to white in a B&W view I can do so very accurately and quickly.
It’s purely a preference, I create more colour images that B&W white ones, I just get there differently!
@danielfrimley I sort of understand that but I prefer to have, and be able to keep or “destroy”, colour JPGs so I will continue to risk a slightly less than perfect composition for that result! In monochrome my G9 takes the JPG in monochrome, the embedded JPG in monochrome but as FastRawViewer shows the RAW is in colour
I use focus peaking, in addition I use back button focussing for setting a hyperfocal focus point, the autofocussing (and focus peaking) continues to be active after the back button focus has been set plus the lens focussing ring can still be used to adjust the focus if required.
In truth the focus peaking obscures the image more than anything else but I have got used to that and one of the buttons on the “diamond” is set to turn that off/on and two of the other buttons force a closer and more distant focus when the camera selects the plant behind the one I want in focus or vice versa (and I cannot remember what I set the other button to do - give a zoomed image!!??)
There was a big call in the Leica CL community to have back button focus, it was never implemented before they discontinued the camera earlier this year - there is a setting/ button combo that sort of achieves it but I never bothered to get my head round it. I can acquire autofocus with no peaking with a half pressed shutter button, then manually move the focus ring (it’s by wire, rather than in fixed increments), the peaking indication only then kicks in and I can sweep the focus plane backwards and forward from the point the autofocus selected. It works well, particularly with the 60mm as the lens has two focus zones (one for macro ranges, one for not) and you can switch from one to the other if it gets in a tizzy
@danielfrimley I am surprised that the Leica does not allow the AE/AF lock button to be “customised” for the AF Lock function, typically they come set up for AE lock, but even my old FZ38 bridge camera could be set that way.
So my Lumix G9 is set up for AF lock but I am free to use the normal shutter button to do both AF and AE if I so choose.
However, once the AF lock is engaged then it will acquire the focus and remain locked until pressed again and the shutter button “only” controls AE, albeit that can be chosen at random with the half-press and with focus locked on the back button and exposure locked on the (half-press of the) shutter button you are free to compose the shot and complete by fully pressing the shutter button!
The lens is an Olympus 12-200 (24-400) and the focus ring still remains active after the focus is “locked”, if the ring is moved then the viewfinder changes so it becomes obvious that it has been moved (deliberately or by accident)!
PS:- @danielfrimley I wasn’t intending to “tease” you with features that your camera does not have, that was an accident, I simply thought all cameras came with the AE/AF button and clearly some don’t!!
LOL, that’s fine, I understand - in firmware 3.1 they “AF / AE lock added to FN menu” which “The AF and AE lock function allows you to lock your focus or exposure settings separately as you recompose your shot” but I don’t believe it ever made it into the manual. The scope of the functionality is shown in a screenshot from this blog, with these options:
So it’s one, the other, or both. This sounds like what you describe though by the time they implemented it I’d moved on.
The other odd thing they never picked up despite a lot of user demand was the ability to lock the focus spot screen centre, if I had a pound for the number of times I bring the camera to my eye only to find the crosshair buried in the bottom right corner of the viewfinder because the d-pad has been knocked/ rubbed/ moved I’d have an M
This typically happens to me when I have had the screen open (touch screen) and I don’t think I can lock it but I have set the camera to display the centre point so it looks a little more obvious (when I actually notice that it has happened!!)
As PhotoLab is an advanced parametric controlled mosaic based raw developer it’s not in the path of its core work flow to display a preview it is not able to affect nor responsible for.
A speedy rendition of something PL can not deliver is - in my opinion - wrong way to go.
PL is neither a sophisticated image viewer or a simple raw developer or pixel editor.