@Willis, here is the first image that I have run through Silver Fx, bear in mind that this is *not* one of my all time best shots (children dodging) and also it was first contact with the programme.
However, the user interface is quite friendly, and this was just select one of the presets and up the brightness by 5 or 6 notches.

Willis - I use it for all my B&W - here is a link for a B&W project I've done last year (LINK)

I've also read good things about Silver FX Pro. Let us know how it turns out (by let us know, I mean Post some pictures). I've been kicking around giving it a try.

Thanks for the link, adamz, I have downloaded the demo version for the standalone version, and patched it as an external editor in to Lightroom (even though there is a version for Lightroom) and had a quick look at it.

From first impressions, it has the sort of 'black and white' as I envisaged straight from camera, so I am going to have a play with that for a few days to see if it is worth the price for the license.

Once again, thanks, and I cannot wait to see what this programme can actually do!

try silver fx pro - for sure there's an add on for aperture, not sure either there's a one for LR, but there's a stand alone version of this product (LINK)

I've been bugged a while by black and white conversion, mainly not looking as good as it should.

If I shoot JPEG black and white on the cameras (D200 and D300) it comes out looking quite close to how I envisaged it, and also looks quite similar to the LCD preview, however, if I shoot RAW with black and white optimisation, then it never seems to have the right effect.

I've tried conversion through ACR, NX2 and Lightroom, but it always seems to lack the punch I want.

I only seem to be able to get close if I run the image through Photoshop, but I don't really like using Photoshop. Is there any other way of getting good, as in film like black and white, without having to actually go back and shoot on film?