Awesome shot, Bland. I showed it to my wife who is a runner and who is almost never interested in photography/photos and she loved it, too. Nice black and white treatment, too.

Here is a lurker that appreciates the advice and tips.

Nicely done!

Needless to say you all were right on with everything you have posted. I got Lightroom3 today and I feel like a kid who just got his first baseball mitt. There's no price to the information that you have all posted here as many lurking are valuing it as I am.

Thanks again for all your help. Here's one of mine from today, she got 2nd place in the womens 15K.

D90 70-300VR(@270mm) F8 @ 1/500

Hi Bland,

I haven't used Adobe Elements in a while, but there are some B&W tools in it that work very well.

ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) which updates to Adobe Elements, has a great tool for converting to grayscale under HSL (Hue, Saturation, and Luminance (it's the 4th button between Sharpening and Split Toning on the right under the info window on the upper right).

It is sort of a mini-mixer and you can adjust the various channels as you would in Photoshop and the colors would act as if it were shot 'live' in camera.

You should be able to download the latest ACR to your Adobe Elements from Adobe at:

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html

Others have suggestion of the Channel Mixer in Photoshop CS5 or the SilverFlex Pro plug in are perfect, too, but since you don't have those tools, perhaps a bit out of your range of doable. Lightroom is also a great tool for monochromatic prints.

Good luck and my best,

Mike

I also like the B&W adjustment layers on the more recent versions of photoshop with the sliders for each color. Lightroom has a similar interface and is really capable at B&W conversion, too. I also like the way it handles duotoning with the split toning controls, which IMO is easier than photoshop the way I know how to do it (but photoshop is better if you're actually going to have a print shop print in two tones for you—that probably doesn't apply to many of us around here).

nice tips dave

Always shoot in RAW. You can convert color to b&w but not the other way around (always shoot in RAW anyway, why wouldn't you? You can always downgrade). Also, convert to b&w in the channel mixer in Photoshop. Just desaturating the image gives poor results. Converting using channel mixer gives a more darkroom look to it if you do it right. The trick is to estimate what percentage of each channel you want in the final look and always make sure the combined values add up to 100 (if you want the same exposure). Each channel has its own qualities. First select each channel in the channels pallet individually to see what look you are after. After you open the channel mixer, click on monochrome and start tweaking.If you like the look of the red channel a lot, the green channel a little and the blue channel not so much, you may end up experimenting with a R 60%, G 30% and B 10% mix. Hope that helps a little.

Lightroom 3 that is great along with Photoshop 7. Maybe also nikon nx2

Thanks for the terrific info everyone. Looks like I'll be shooting in color tomorrow using raw!

Mike, all I have is Nikon's PictureProject and Adobe's Element 7. I'm getting ready to get the good editing software next month but I'm still deciding on what to get. Any suggestions on what to get would be highly appreciated, from all of you. I've tried all the different software's free trials and I'm actually leaning to the Nikon NX2 software but I'm all ears on what to get.

Thanks

+1 to all that was said, especially on getting Silver Efex Pro. Tried out the demo and it's great.

bland, it's true with all dslrs. shoot raw and edit afterwards in aperture, lightroom, ps, etc. get silver fx to get the most out of ur photos

Sometimes I'll shoot in RAW+JPEG, with monochrome picture controls turned on. A good example is in mixed lighting, like a street scene with off camera flash.

Hi Bland,

What tools do you own? Let's start there.

My best,

Mike

I would shoot in color and use RAW as others have suggested. If you plan on doing a lot of black and white in the future and have Photoshop, the Silver Efex Pro plugin from NIK is pretty awesome. You can always try out the demo.

It's nearly always better to shoot color and then later on convert to b&w. You get more control, and you always have the color version to use (just in case).

No-brainer for me: RAW. In fact what's so cool about this (I use a D90 as well by the way) is that you can just set your camera to monochrome and shoot in RAW at the same time. You can then get a general idea of what the image will look like in B&W and still edit it afterwards, and because you shot in RAW you can always go back to color. You'll really want to learn a bit about the color channels and how changing those will change the look of a monochrome picture.
Have a look at this (really useful):
http://www.geofflawrence.com/photoshop_tutorial_channel_mixer.php

I would shoot in raw and convert over afterwards. I'm no good at editing, but raw definitely gives you more flexibility.

We have our big Tulsa 15K Run this weekend and I thought I'd try shooting it in black and white. As I was searching the web last night for tips on shooting the black and white mode I came across Ken Rockwell saying not to use the Monocrome setting and just edit the color pictures to make them black and white. Is this true with the D90?

Do any of you have any tips with shooting in the Monochrome mode, as this will be my first attempt in doing so? Such as, should I shoot in raw, which color filter (it will be sunny tomorrow) setting and etc. Thanks!