Black & White w/SDX900

[evalooshun]

I'm going to begin principal photography on a project at the end of this month with the SDX900 and the final product will need to be in in black and white. I was curious as to what would be the best route in achieving this.

 

I noticed that from the downloadable scene files in the Goodmans Guide that there was no plain B&W setting. Does this mean that it's not possible to extract all the color from the image? I've also heard that it's not possible to do so with the Varicam either.

 

If I was to shoot in color and then correct to black and white in post, what would be the best way to view the image on set? Is it as simple as switching my monitor to black and white and referencing from there? Or should I be doing something completely different?

 

Any thoughts, tips, or past experiences would be of great help.

 

Thanks!

[Michael Nash]

As you may have noticed there's no way to get ALL the color out of the image in-camera with the SDX-900. Post is your only option.

 

I shot a segment for a TV pilot in B&W with the SDX. I set up the camera for a fairly neutral/natural color reproduction, then on set I simply turned the chroma down on the monitor, and in post we simply hit "desaturate" in Final Cut Pro. There were no surprises between what I saw on set and what I got in post.

 

Beyond that, you may want to tweak the gamma a bit to achieve the most desireable B&W image. I think I ended up raising the master gamma a little bit and then closing down the iris to round of the highlight rsponse a little more smoothly. But that was specific to the scene I was shooting.

[Miguel Bunster]

I being playing with B&W in video for a music video I did, shot in PD-150 and I think I got descent results.

I did the same procedure as you but thenin most I color graded by layers a lot.

Now trying to get it on DVD but hell I cant ge the contrast Ihave in the final dv file to dvd colors and contrast go bananas...

Any wayhere is a link to it. Any opinions would be great.

www.mb-dp.com/lcp.mov

Thanks

Miguel

[Gordon Highland]

I think the biggest thing is to light it for B&W. Yes, you can turn down the chroma on the monitor, but as the other poster mentioned, you'll probably want to do a lot of post correction unless you like that flatter look. I'm not a fan of simple desaturation; I don't think it looks quite right, and prefer to adjust the gamma on teh R,G,B channels individually to get the right combination. Not sure of the look you're going for, though.

 

Here's a chessy extreme example I had to throw together one afternoon. Just two hard lights and a lot of post processing (the crappy audio sells it, i think). Link

[evalooshun]

Thanks for the advice guys! I had a great time shooting this project and I'm very happy with how it came out. It's been months since princpal photography for "Bookie" and we're in the final stages of post. Here's a link to the trailer. Any comments would be great.

 

Bookie Trailer

 

Also I was wondering if anyone has any experience with Color Finesse. We're planning on doing our final color correction with it and I haven't used it before. Being that the project is B&W I'm wondering if there's anything else out there that would help.