Digital Darkroom Fun

I’ve been shooting like a madman ever since I purchased the Sony Alpha 100 DSLR. Digital is great in that respect, no worries about purchasing film, developing negatives, getting prints made, etc., just shoot and upload from the camera to the computer. I’ve messed around with some of the DEC (Color Mode) settings on the Alpha and have had great results using ‘Standard’ and ‘Vivid’ color modes. Others include Portrait, Landscape, Sunset, Night, BW, and AdobeRGB. Except for AdobeRGB, all other Color Modes incorporate the sRGB color space, which is utilized for the web and most print labs. AdobeRGB is primarily used for four-color press printing.

I decided to play with the BW (Black and White) Color mode on the Alpha since I have always enjoyed developing my own black and white film and producing prints in my darkroom. Agfa APX 100 is my B&W film of choice. Common ways to generate a black and white print using digital, are to simply expose in JPEG mode using an sRGB color space, and desaturate after the fact using Adobe Photoshop or some other imaging editing tool; use RAW/sRGB and save to a desaturated JPEG, or use the BW color space to generate a black and white image at time of exposure. Since the third option can be limiting, (you’ll never get the color version if doing this using non-RAW quality settings) I decided to choose the BW color mode but shoot in RAW. Using this method allows the capture of a color RAW image, but when saving to JPEG using camera settings the result is the intended B&W image. This method also allows for a preview of the monochrome image on the LCD of the camera.

Using a black background, a single AlienBee B800 monolight with attached brolley box, and a white reflector I grabbed my best guinea pigs (the kids!) and went to work. After completing several shots and uploading them from the camera to the computer, I converted the RAW images using the Image Data Converter SR tool, that comes with the A100, to JPEGs using the original in-camera settings. I’m generally pleased with results. Nice tonal quality. I’ll be interested to see how the prints turn out. Click here to view a small gallery of images taken using the Sony Alpha 100 DSLR in BW Color Mode and Standard Dynamic Range at ISO 100. The Sony 18-70mm f3.5-5.6 AF kit lens was used for these images at 70mm.