Photography question

[Neil]

Today, while I was walking Shannon (my beatiful 1 y/o Golden Retriever) on the railroad tracks, I took my camera along. Once I got home, I loaded them up. I was impressed, they were some of my best yet. The lighting was great. Then I duplicated a few of the best and started fooling around with the settings in Iphoto. I converted one to black and white, and tried something else called "Sepia". I have no idea what it is or where it came from (proabably some old-style photo style thing) or what it is, but it looks cool. The B&W looks best IMHO.

So I was wondering... How does one take advantage of these three options (standard color, b&w, and sepia), and in what conditions/circumstances are they best used?

I'm going to post all 3 versions of my fauvorite picture, so you can vote on which you like best. (i'm bored, its winter, its a month to the next launch, and ive got nothing better to do than ask you guys which picture format you like best. yeesh.)

Anyways here goes. The first is standard color.

 

[Neil]

Black and White version

 

[Neil]

And the Sepia version.

Someone please tell me why they call it "sepia"!! :kill:

 

[Neil]

aw, crap.

Mislabeled the pics. Wrong order, wrong ones. gimme a minute and i'll fix it...

edit: all better

 

[11bravo]

From MS Bookshelf Basics Dictionary
:
sepia (sê´pê-e) noun
1. a. A dark brown ink or pigment originally prepared from the secretion of the cuttlefish. b. A drawing or picture done in this pigment. c. A photograph in a brown tint.
2. Color. A dark grayish yellow brown to dark or moderate olive brown.

adjective
1. Color. Of the color sepia.
2. Done or made in sepia.

[Middle English, cuttlefish, from Latin sêpia, cuttlefish, ink, from Greek, cuttlefish; perhaps akin to sêpein, to make rotten.]

Basically brown and white instead of black and white.

Must have to be more artsy than I to appreciate it's beauty.
Doesn't look bad, just nothing special to me.

Pretty dog.

Greg

 

[Adam Selene]

it looks like they are reversed, sepia is the brown tinted and B&W is the grey tones. you can tell cause brown isn't either black nor white. sepia would start as a b&w print and be treated while still in the darkroom with some chemical (can't remember what, it was back in the day when i had to walk 10 miles uphill (both ways) in 3 feet of snow to get to school) to give it that brown tint. you can't say that any of the 3 (or more, there's a bunch of different things to tint prints with) is better, just which one works best for a particular photo and what the photographer was trying to say with a particular photo. if this made anything clearer for you it was totaly by accident.

the great thing about digital is you can just shoot and decide later if you want a straight color print or to do something "artsy". if only you could get the razor sharp image that was usually my goal with film.

 

[KermieD]

In a case such as this, to me at least, color is the right choice. Sepia or B&W are great when photographing some things, such as very old houses (sepia), historical sites (either of the two), striking emotional scenes (kneeling at a grave--B&W), or older grandparents or great-grandparents (usually B&W).

Most of the time, though, unless you are VERY good at choosing subject matter for the other formats, color is preferable.

 

[BlueNinja]

For rockets, I prefer color, however I recently used a roll of B&W for a school project. The pictures came out GREAT.

 

[cmmeyers]

Thats the nice thing about digital. With my camera, in addition to color, I am able to shoot pictures in B&W, Sepia, negative and several other artistic special effects.

However, I usually shoot everything in color, and then later choose to apply those affects with software (photoshope or whatever you prefer!) to specific photographs.

I purchased my first digital camera almost 3 years ago and since then I have taken over 14,000 pictures! I love my digital camera!

 

[jflis]

In my opinion, the choice to go B/W or Sepia is a mood setting choice. Color photo's tend to look busier. reducing them to BW tends to quiet them down a notch.

Good subjects for BW (imho) are old barns, old fences, things that are nearly monochrome already. A snow background enhances this. It also ages the photo (makes it look older than it is), but nothing like Sepia. Sepia wasn't an "artsy" format years ago, it's just what came out. I am not sure if it was a part of the development process or if it was something that happened as the pictured aged, but it wasn't a *goal* of the photographer (as far as I know...).

However, take a famly photo and make it Sepia and it looks *old*. Subject matter is a matter of choice, but people are a very good choice for sepia.

just my 2cents
jim

 

[OKTurbo]

FWIW...

The biggest use of Sepia that I've seen are old blueprint masters. In the days before CAD, a draftsman would ink a drawing on mylar or vellum paper. These inked drawings could be used in a blue print machine to make copies. I spent many hours making prints when I was an Engineering Coop. (You go home each day smelling like bleach).

The sepias were made of the original ink drawing so that it could be archived. These old ink drawings took many hours to create....literally works of art in some cases. The sepias were used in the blueprint machine instead of the master ink drawing.

As the sepia would age, it turns into that orange/yellow color and starts to become somewhat brittle.

Now you just print off a new drawing on your giant inkjet plotter...

(I'm turning into an old fart)

 

[lalligood]

I prefer to take all of my pictures A) digitally & B) in color.

Reason being is that with pictures in color you have all possible data. If I want the same picture in B&W or sepia or whatever, I have a plethora of tools at my disposal to alter the original image.

I'll also throw in that I have recently enjoyed the power of Picasa by Google. It not only does a fantastic job of organizing & viewing digital images, it also has some *amazingly* intelligent editting tools that simply work. There is a "I'm feeling lucky" button that will automatically make all of the appropriate adjustments to balance the image. Truly amazing. And the program is FREE!

 

[r1dermon]

i think black and white gives a better depth with the shadowing. to me its more formal. but thats just my opinion.

 

[WiK]

My 12yr old sister things your dog is the cutest thing in the world now Neil (until she look at another animal, at least). Be afraid!

Phil
Btw, I like the colour one best

 

[huxley]

I agree that Sepia is best for people.

Here's my fav Sepia shot (Sepia mode on camera)

 

[Ozymandias]

That's a tough question. I like black and white (tri-x especially) but I also like color. I guess it depends on the picture and the mood I'm in.

 

[Neil]

Originally posted by WiK
My 12yr old sister things your dog is the cutest thing in the world now Neil (until she look at another animal, at least). Be afraid!

Phil
Btw, I like the colour one best

lol!!

Well, she IS a very handsome dog. Looks even better when I adjust the contrast in Iphoto... My new avatar is a perfect example of that

Heres another nice B&W of Shannon.

 

[Neil]

Oh, and considering the rather large body of water between us, i'm not too scared.

Heres a cool one of a wave breaking. I like it, therefore I will post it.

I post pictures, therefore I am.



This picture was almost pure luck. All the pictures I tried to get of waves breaking didnt turn out so good, but this one I just turned around, saw the wave coming, and pressed the button. And it worked! All my good pictures are like that. The B51 and the smaller training fighter flying together at LDRS, all the good dog pictures, this wave picture, they were all spontaneous. I cant for the life of me pose a good picture, but when I just click, it always seems to work out.

But is it art?

 

[Neil]

Heres an interesting B&W pic I took the morning after a huge snowstorm. I think we got 15" that time...

 

[Neil]

Heres a funny one of Shannon running towards me. I was trying to get a picture of her standing in the snow, but she decided she'd rather come running at me instead

 

[KarlD]

Shannon is a pretty puppy...

 

[WiK]

That B&W snow pic looks like the drawing off the front of a Christmas card to me.

 

[Reed Goodwin]

Well, I am in a photography class at my highschool and we shoot mostly black and white so that we can develop the film and make prints ourselves. We did do a little work with sepia toning prints, but I can kind of remember the process: first you had to bleach the print and then submerge it in a chemical bath whose name is escaping me. All I remember is that it contained sulfur because it smelled like rotten eggs ( know the smell too well...).
Reed

 

[Stones]

I especially like the pic labeled dscf0047. Gives the dog rather a stoic look.

 

[Neil]

Yea, she does look great in those pictures. I told her to sit, and then stay, and I waited until she had her head turned the right way and *click*. She's normally not that stoic and regal, though.


See DSF0065 for what shes like MOST of the time

 

[dragonshiprider]

Originally posted by Neil


So I was wondering... How does one take advantage of these three options (standard color, b&w, and sepia), and in what conditions/circumstances are they best used?


I just got a new computer with Jasc Paint Shop Photo Album 5 and Win XP.I just discovered the sepia thing,too.Haven't found a sure use for it yet but it has made some of my old drag racing pics look interesting.I still like the color pic of your dog,though.Nice lookin' pooch BTW.

 

[Elapid]

and other toners convert the silver metal in the sinver-gelatin prints into silver sulfide which gives the print an old-time feel and makes it last much longer since the sulfide is more stable than the silver metal.

it really seems silly to me to 'sepia tone' digitally.