Ahola Development Blog

Our Silver B&W Camera is for B&W photographers. It gives tools to control how color is transformed to a grayscale image.

(And of course you can take great color photos also, so even if your not in to b&w photography you will like the rich features of Silver B&W Camera)

Image above has five quick selection buttons at the bottom of screen to set the mode of the camera.

At left is colorful button for color photos.

Next to it is a grayscale button for very natural looking b&w photos. It approximates the way human eye is sensitive to different colors.

In the settings you can select the startup mode to be color mode or this natural b&w mode.

The last three buttons select a single channel of color and uses it to create the b&w image.

Digital camera is sensitive to three colors – red, green and blue. So the sliders at the upper right corner correspond to these colors (as do the quick selection buttons). You can adjust each slider between 0 and 100. Zero means that this color is ignored and all other values indicate the relative amount of that color in the b&w transformation.

The highest value color looks lightest and the lowest value color darkest in the transformed image. So if you set red to some value greater than zero and the green and blue to zero then pure red is transformed to white and pure green and blue to black. (You can also set this mode by touching red quick selection button.)

Real targets you photograph in real lightning conditions never have pure red, green or blue colors so red would not be really white but instead have somewhat darker shade. Green and blue would not be absolute black but somewhat lighter shade of gray.

Please note that the sliders are relative in nature. For example when only one slider has other value than zero then the actual value is not important – all values create same result. Also if two sliders have non zero value and they have the same value it is not important witch value it is – all values yield the same result. And finally if all sliders have same value, then the result is same regardless the actual value.

Only exception is when all three sliders are set to zero, then the camera is in color photo mode.

When the non zero values of sliders differ, then they indicate the relative lightness or darkness of that color in the transformation.

And finally, with relative we mean that the values do not actually change the overall exposure of the image. It stays about the same if the scene contains about average amount of each color. If you take a photo of red wall and turn red channel to zero then your photo may look a bit dark. But that is a special case.

RAW image files are basically just what the camera sensor sees thru the lens. There is no processing, fixing and correcting done. The JPEG photo is processed by software to fix colors, exposure and even other errors software can detect. So is iPhone and iPad take great photos, why shoot RAW?

Sometimes you want to fix the photo yourself. You have some great software you like to work with. And over time all software tend to get better in doing things and so does RAW image processing software. When you have the original RAW data at hand you can use the new software capabilities to give your photos a new look.

Silver B&W Camera takes RAW photos. They are saved together with the JPEG image as DNG file. There are several options to get access of the DNG file – one is using A Photo Tool.

Shooting RAW with Silver B&W can be bit confusing as the iPhone and iPad set some restrictions to when RAW image is available. If your device has multiple cameras (we call them lenses) you must select wide of tele lens.

And you can not use zoom. That is because the lenses on your device are fixed length (focal length) and all zooming is done digitally cropping the image. So it makes sense to only have the non zoomed RAW photos as you can always use your editing software to make the crop you want.

Also you must enable the RAW format. Go to settings and switch RAW on. By default this removes non RAW features – like automatic lens and zoom buttons. But you can enable the non RAW compatible features if you like.

If you enable non RAW compatible features Silver B&W Camera saves RAW file when it is available and possible. So you can use all the features of Silver B&W Camera. You get RAW when the settings are right but you can zoom if you like and know that you still get JPEG.

One thing to note is that although Silver B&W Camera is geared towards black and white photography the RAW photo version is always in color. The sensors records color and the b&w jpeg is created by Silver B&W Camera so the RAW is what the sensors sees.

You have create tools to take b&w photos with Silver B&W Camera, but when RAW is available you can later rethink how to convert the photo to grayscale or even keep the colors if you change your mind.

Your device may have one, two or three cameras on its back. Silver B&W Camera has setting to select a camera. We call this selecting the lens to use when taking a photo or shooting video.

Lens (camera) is selected by button shown in the picture below. If your device has only one camera then the lens selection button is not visible.

There is one extra lens listed in the selection. That is lens A – automatic. A is default and lets the operating system to choose lens to be used based on zoom and focus.

All devices have wide lens. That is selected by button W. If you device has only one camera then this is it.

Some devices have tele lens. That is selected by button T. Tele gives narrower field of view compared to wide lens.

Some devices may have third camera that is called Ultra Wide. That is selected by button UW. It gives a really wide field of view and can produce exiting results.

On front of your device you have one single camera to take selfies. Switch to it using button marked with circling arrows.