Canon XT with no B&W

is300soon

Why does this camera lack in the area of B&W? A salesman at Best buy who might not really know what he is talking about or might who knows but he says the Nikon in the same price class has BW and the Canon doesn't GRRRRRRRR

Anyone really know why canon doesn't have a function for this?

Thanks
David

colourbox

You mean a black and white mode right in the camera? Personally, I would find it unnecessary and unwanted. I would much rather shoot full spectrum color and convert it later. In Adobe Camera Raw this is simply a matter of setting the Saturation to all frames to zero, but I consider that quick and dirty - just like an in-camera B&W.

For serious B&W prints I prefer to take the full color image into Photoshop and run color filters or channel adjustments on it to get exactly the color-to-B&W translation I want, as if I had shot black and white film with color filters but with the advantage of not locking down the image result so early in the process.

Now, if you're talking about a B&W preview in camera, that would be very useful, as long as it still recorded a full color frame to keep my options open. (By the way - I'm probably going to pick up an XT myself.)

bkriete

When you take a picture in B&W mode on most digital cameras (except for one obscure no-longer-in-production Kodak one), what happens is the camera throws out the color info and makes its own choices about how to do the b&w conversion. If you convert on your own in Photoshop (or other picture manipulation programs), you get to make choices about how you want your picture turned into black and white. If you just want to do a quick conversion, it takes about five seconds. If you want to spend hours making it look perfect, you can do that too.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that "b&w" isn't a really important feature and has nothing to do with final image quality. If you are trying to take great black and white pictures, you'll probably be converting them in Photoshop. If you just like the effect, you can do an equally effective conversion of the same quality as your camera in just a few minutes.

leebase

is300soon wrote:

Anyone really know why canon doesn't have a function for this?

I believe the salesman is mistaken. While the digital rebel did not have bw "in camera" -- the 350xt does.

I shoot with the 20 which DEFINATELY has that feature. But I almost never use it. I prefer to shoot in color and convert to bw in post processing.

Actually, now that I shoot mostly RAW -- it's a moot point. Certainly this is not an issue for which to decide between camera's on.

Lee

is300soon

unless i am missing something I don't see anywhere that the Xt does shoot in BW/

thanks
d

NHBubba

See now I thought the only dSLR that had this feature presently was the Canon 20D. I didn't think either the Rebel XT or the Nikon D70 had such a feature. I know for a fact my DRebel does not (not that that was in contention!). I wouldn't get too pent up about what a Best Buy twelve year old.. er, uh 'salesman' says. Do the research on the 'net yourself.

FWIW: I too think it's a dumb feature. You do nothing but loose information when using such a setting.. and it's pointless as the built in 'digital color filters' are not visible in the viewfinder, so you can't tell how they are going to effect the image when composing anyhow.

JHarris1984

leebase wrote:

I believe the salesman is mistaken. While the digital rebel did not have bw "in camera" -- the 350xt does.

I shoot with the 20 which DEFINATELY has that feature. But I almost never use it. I prefer to shoot in color and convert to bw in post processing.

Actually, now that I shoot mostly RAW -- it's a moot point. Certainly this is not an issue for which to decide between camera's on.

Lee

Hmmm never seen a BW mode on my XT.... haha. I wouldn't use it anyways because I can do it in photoshop fine but still haven't seen it(or just not looking really hard lol)

patch29

is300soon wrote:

unless i am missing something I don't see anywhere that the Xt does shoot in BW/

thanks
d

It is buried in the menus, under parameters, then you can also select color filter effects, similar to using color filters with B&W film.

I too don't use this, you could always use Canon's raw software to get that simple effect or do it in PS.

NHBubba

Well will yah look at that! There it is, right under the params menu.. I thought I had read they didn't put that feature on the XT.. Teach me to shoot my mouth off about cameras I don't own! ... Er, uh, no, it probably won't, will it?!