Black and White Lesson and a Surprise Challenge

Linda asked me to do a Lesson on Black and White Photography. So here's how it's going to work. Read the lesson and follow the instructions, take a picture to post to THIS THREAD. I will critique it when posted. I will make suggestions for bettering the photo. You can also ask questions about the photo. You will retake the photo (so make sure you take a picture of something that you can reshoot), make any corrections and repost. For this lesson, you will probably not have to retake the picture. You will just have to reedit it in your editing program. Be sure to ALWAYS work on a copy of the original. NEVER work directly on the original. We'll keep doing the same thing until you are happy with your photo. This thread will stay open as long as you want it to. When everyone is happy with their pictures, we'll start a different lesson. In some lessons I'm going to add a special Challenge that I want you to work on. You don't have to do the special Challenges, if you don't want to. They will just help with the understanding of your camera. Usually this can be incorporated into the pictures you take for the lesson.

Converting to B&W is very easy to do, but there are so many different ways that it's a matter of what type editing program you have. If you want to take the picture in B&W right out of the camera, you'll need to read your manual and follow the instructions. Each camera is different. This is not the best way to do it, anyway. Once taken in B&W, it can't be converted back to color in a software program unless you're working in RAW and have a RAW converter that will revert to color. I'm going to tell you how I convert to B&W. It is not the best way, but it works well for me. I don't have the best method in my editing program. I'm going to list the different methods that can be used in case you want to google the others for yourself.
Number one is the method I use.

1. Desaturate the colors
2. Convert to greyscale
3. Convert to Lab Mode
4. Channel Mixer - This is the best B&W conversion method.

The simplest way to change a color photo to B&W is to remove (desaturate) the color. I use PhotoShop Elements 5. These instructions are for that program (or any version of PSE). PhotoShop uses close to the same commands. If you use a different program, hunt around until you find the Hue/Saturation adjustment.

1. Load your picture in the editing program. The rest of these instructions will be for PhotoShop Elements.
2. Click Enhance>Color>Hue/Saturation
3. Slide the Saturation slider all the way to the left to -100. Your picture is B&W.
4. Now you can enhance as if it were a color picture.

It's that simple.

Assignment: Take a well composed, properly exposed picture and convert it to B&W. By now you should be able to take well composed and well exposed pictures. I may ask you to retake the picture, if yours isn't well composed and well exposed.

Surprise Challenge: Unfortunately this is for those with dSLRs and lenses that manual focus.
There is a button on the side of your lens that says AF/MF. When in AF, you are in auto focus mode. When in MF, you are in manual focus mode. Try taking your pictures in manual focus. Slide the button to MF, use the focusing ring on the front of your lens to manually focus your picture. With a Canon dSLR, if you press the shutter button half way in MF and turn the focusing ring, the center focus point will light up and beep when focus is achieved. I'm not sure if it works the same for the Nikons and other dSLRs. There are times when you can't use auto focus. It is always good to know how to manually focus your camera. Remember manual focus and manual exposure are not the same thing. You have to manually expose your picture and then manually focus before you shoot.