B&W camera test:
To test the black & white mode on my new Fuji F440 digital camera , I snapped two identical macro images of a white rose in my garden. One in colour and one in the camera ‘s B&W mode. The rose was under a bright but overcast 5pm sky. Comparison test shots can be seen here (220kb). Firstly, I converted the colour shot to B&W using the old ‘LAB mode / brightness channel only / convert to greyscale, discard other channels’ method. Secondly I converted using the superior Hue & Sat layers conversion method, and then tweaked the sliders. The LAB method slightly blew out some highlights on the rose. The Hue & Sat method, after tweaking, gave a fairly good result (slightly more ‘Persil white’, but at the price of noticable loss of contrast on the inner folds of the rose). The camera ‘s own B&W shot though, totally unadjusted, actually seems to be the best. I’m impressed.