B&W digital photography

I've been enjoying the BBC's 'Genius of Photography' series currently airing in the UK. Yesterday's covered some fantastic B&W photographs from the mid 20th century, which inspired me to try to get some similar effects from my modern-day Lumix FZ-28.

Previous attempts to achieve pleasing digital B&W shots have been disappointing. Quite often because the technique has been to shoot a conventional colour shot, desaturate it in Photoshop, and then try to add some contrast and grain to achieve the vintage B&W look, without destroying too much detail. Last night I stumbled upon the following article by Tony Karp which gave me some clues as to how to configure my camera to take a good B&W shot directly, with little post-processing required:

http://www.tlc-systems.com/artzen2-0093.htm

I configured my Lumix with settings I believe are close to what Tony was using, and here are my initial results:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mobile.harvey/TwickenhamMarch2009#

OK - not the most exciting subject matter, but I'm very pleased with the contrast and texture of these shots. Certainly the best B&W results I've ever achieved on a digital camera. I'll be taking more in the near future for sure!

Thanks for reading,
Nick.