Manassas Battlefield - Color, B&W, or neither?

[rgeorge911]

I awoke early this morning and drove the 25 minutes or so to the Manassas battlefield - site of not one, but two major battles in the United States' Civil War.  The battles raged here because of the confluence of two railroad lines, one out West to the Shenandoah Valley joining with the other, right into Washington, DC.  It's also the site of the origin of the "Rebel Yell," the noise the rebels made to dismay their enemies.  It's also where "Stonewall" Jackson earned his nickname.  Here's a shot of the rails near there:


P1120856.jpg by reed_flickr (www.creativeobjective.com), on Flickr
Lumix DMC-G1 with old, foggy Elmar 35mm f3.5

But, that's not the subject of this post.  I was literally driving by this gate and saw something I had to capture.  This is the house, now known as the "Henry House," on the battlefield.  Apparently, 85 year old Mrs. Henry was killed in the gunfire in "First Manassas," or "First Bull Run," depending on whether you're talking to a Yankee or a Rebel.  I turned around, and shot it a couple of different ways.  I'm interested in opinions about what, if anything, works about either version here:

First:

P1120840_HDR.jpg by reed_flickr (www.creativeobjective.com), on Flickr
Lumix DMC-G1 with Leica/Panasonic 45mm f2.8 macro lens

Second:

P1120845_HDR.jpg by reed_flickr (www.creativeobjective.com), on Flickr
Lumix DMC-G1 with same old foggy Elmar 35mm f3.5

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Regards,
Reed

[Julio1fer]

Both versions work well. My favorite would be the color one. The trail is lost in the B&W version, and the colors are quite in harmony.

[jamesmck]

Reed - I agree with Julio about the color shot.  Did you try one at an angle, slightly left or right of center (maybe the foliage didn't allow that)?  BTW, I like the foggy Elmar shot a lot - a variation of Leica glow :cool:.

James

[P C Headland]

Even though the tracks are somewhat lost on the B&W version, I still prefer it.  It may be possible to play around with the contrast locally to bring them out.  Also may be worth seeing if you can burn in the sky a little to see if you can extract just a little more detail (it is there in both versions, just a little more apparent in the colour version)

BTW, how do you find the 45mm lens.  I'm trying to decide between it an the newly announced Olympus lens.  I primarily want it as a portrait / short telephoto lens rather than as a macro.  The Olympus one is half the price, but doesn't do macro, nor does is it stabilised on the GF1.

[rgeorge911]

Hi Paul - thanks for the comments.  I will try both ideas.

I like the PanaLeica 45mm quite a lot.  It takes a lot of heat for not being wide enough aperture to get good dof for portraits.  I don't find that to be a problem at all.  Of course, 1.8 would be nicer.  When I really want to shoot macro, I will go to my Nikon kit.  But, I find that I do use the 45mm closeup pretty often, just because I can.  It is great for details on travel, etc. 

I happened to find a great deal on this one, or never would have paid full price.  Now that I've used it, I would consider normal price.

The Olympus looks promising, too.  Maybe that's why I got a deal on the PanaLeica?

Regards,
Reed

[br1078lum]

Reed, I prefer the composition of the color one, but both shots are good.

PF